UC-NRLF 


<:    E    fll7    273 


LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


S£Af£HAL 


RUSKIN   RELICS 


RUSKIN  RELICS 


BY 


W.   G.   COLLINGWOOD 

AUTHOR    OF 

"THE  LIFE  OF  JOHN  RUSKIN,"  ETC. 


WITH  FIFTY  ILLUSTRATIONS  BY 
JOHN    RUSKIN    AND   OTHERS 


or  THt    '^ 

UNIVERSITY 


NEW   YORK 
T.    Y.    CROWELL    &   CO. 

PUBLISHERS 
1904 


GEUERAL 


Twelve  chapters  are  here  reprinted^  with  some 
additions^  from  "  Good  Words,''  by  the  courtesy  of 
the  Editor  and  Publishers.  Another,  on  Ruskins 
Drawings,  is  adapted,  by  permission,  from  the 
author  s  "  Prefatory  Notes  to  the  Catalogue  of  the 
Rusk  in  Exhibition  at  the  Gallery  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Painters  in  Water  Colours "  in  igoi. 
The  first  chapter  is  newly  written  for  this  book. 

W.  G.  a 

Coniston,  September  1903 


142G73 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEl 
I. 

Ruskin's 

Chair 

II. 

Ruskin's 

"Jump" 

III. 

Ruskin's 

Gardening 

IV. 

Ruskin's 

Old  Road 

V. 

Ruskin's 

«  Cashbook  " 

VI. 

Ruskin's 

Ilaria 

VII. 

Ruskin's 

Maps     . 

VIII. 

Ruskin's 

Drawings 

IX. 

Ruskin's 

Hand      . 

X. 

Ruskin's 

Music    . 

XI. 

Ruskin's 

Jewels    . 

XII. 

Ruskin's 

Library  . 

XIII. 

Ruskin's 

Bibles     . 

XIV. 

Ruskin's 
Index  . 

Isola 

I 

29 

45 
63 

83 

105 

119 

133 
149 

165 
179 

193 
213 

299 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


z  and  Lei  Rousses^  1882 


Ruskiri's  Study  at  Brantwood 

Brantwood  Harbour  in  the  Seventies  . 

Coniston  Hall  and  Boathouse 

Ruskins  "  yump  "  adrift  off  Brantwood 

The  Ruskin  Museum^  Coniston   . 

Trial  Model  for  the  fumping  fenny 

The  IVaterfall  at  Brantwood  Door 

Ruskin  s  Reservoir^  Brantwood  . 

Ruskin^ s  Moorland  Garden 

On  Ruskin  s  Old  Roady  between  More: 

Lake  of  Geneva  and  Dent  d^Oches  under  the  Smoke-cloud 

The  Gorge  of  Monnetier  and  Buttresses  of  the  Saleve^  1882 

Mont  Blanc  clearing;  Sallenches^  Sept.  1882 

The  Head  of  the  Lake  of  Annecy  .... 

The  Mont  Cenis  Tunnel  in  Snow^  Nov.  1 1,  1882 

A  Savoy  Town  in  Snow^  Nov.  1882  . 

The  Palace  of  Paolo  Guinigi^  Lucca     .... 

Ilaria  del  Carretto  ;  head  of  the  Effigy 

Thunderstorm  clearing^  Lucca     ..... 

The  Marble  Mountains  of  Carrara  from  the  Lucca  Hills 

Ruskin' s  first  Map  of  Italy 

Geology  on  the  Old  Road^  by  John  Ruskin    . 

Sketch  ofSpain^  by  John  Ruskin  .... 

Physical  Sketch  of  Savoy,  by  "John  Ruskin    . 


Page 

5 

17 
18 

19 
22 

25 

33 
37 
41 
53 

57 
61 

67 

71 

75 

79 

87 

91 

95 

99 

109 

no 

112 

"3 


X  ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  History  of  France^  by  yohn  Ruskin 

Early  Journal  at  Conistoriy  by  yohn  Ruskin 

Ruskin^s  Handwriting  in  1836 

Ruskin'' s  Handwriting  in  iS^y 

Notes  for  "Stones  of  Fenice^"  by  John  Ruskin 

Ruskin^s  Handwriting  in  1875 

Ruskin's  Piano  in  Brantwood  Drawing-room 

"John  Ruskin  in  the  Seventies,  by  Prof.  B.  Creswick 

At  Marmion's  Grave  ;  air  by  "John  Ruskin  [two  pages  of  Music) 

"  Trust  Thou  Thy  Love"  facsimile  of  tnusic  by  "John  Ruskin 

Gold  as  it  Grows      ..... 

Native  Silver,  by  John  Ruskin  . 

Page  from  an  early  Mineral  Catalogue,  by  John  Ruskin 

Letter  on  Snow  Crystals,  by  John  Ruskin 

Diamond  Diagrams,  by  fohn  Ruskin  . 

Ruskin  s  Swiss  Figure       .... 

His  "  Nuremberg  Chronicle  "  and  Pocket  "  Horace  " 

The  Bible  from  which  fohn  Ruskin  learnt  in  Ch  ildhood 

Sermon-book  written  by  Ruskin  as  a  Boy 

Greek  Gospels  with  Annotations  by  Ruskin    . 

King  Hakoris  Bible,  owned  by  Ruskin 

An  Illuminated  Page  of  King  Hakoris  Bible 

Lady  Mount  Temple,  portrait  by  Edward  Clifford 

Lady  Mount  Temple,  chalk  drawing  by  G.  F.  Watts,  R.A. 

Lady  Mount  Temple,  1886 

Lady  Mount  Temple,  1889 


Page 

"7 

137 
139 
141 

143 
145 

153 
156 

160 

163 

169 

170 

171 

174 
175 

185 

189 

197 
199 

201 

203 

207 

217 

220 

223 

224 


RUSKIN'S    CHAIR 


I 
RUSKIN'S    CHAIR 


*'  This  is  all  very  well,"  said  a  visitor,  after  looking  over  the 
sketches  and  books  of  the  Ruskin  Museum  at  Coniston,  "  but 
what  the  public  would  prefer  is  to  see  the  chair  he  sat  in." 
Something  tangible,  that  brings  before  us  the  person,  rather 
than  his  work,  is  what  we  all  like  ;  for  though  successful 
workers  are  continually  asking  us  to  judge  them  by  what  thev 
have  done,  we  know  there  is  more.  We  want  to  see  their 
portraits  ;  their  faces  will  tell  us — better  than  their  books — 
whether  we  can  trust  them.  We  want  to  know  their  lives  by 
signs  and  tokens  unconsciously  left,  before  we  fall  down  and 
worship  them  for  what,  after  all,  may  be  only  a  lucky  accident 
of  success.  They  cry  out  indignantly  that  this  should  not  be  ; 
but  so  it  is. 

Relics  of  heroes  even  the  ancient  Romans  treasured.  Relics 
of  saints  our  forefathers  would  fight  for  and  die  for.  Relics 
of  those  who  in  modern  times  have  made  our  lives  better  and 
brighter  we  need  not  be  ashamed  of  preserving.  And  among 
relics  I  count  all  the  little  incidents,  the  by-play  of  life,  the 
anecdotes  which  betray  character,  so  long  as  they  are  truly  told 
and  *'  lovingly,"  as  George  Richmond  said  about  his  portrait  of 
Ruskin.  "  Have  not  you  flattered  him  .'*  "  asked  the  severe 
parents.     "  No  ;  it  is  only  the  truth  lovingly  told." 

In  his  study  you  see  two  chairs  ;  one,  half-drawn  from  the 
table,  with  pen  and  ink  laid  out  before  it,  where  he  used  to  sit 


4  RUSKIN    RELICS 

at  his  writing  ;  the  light  from  the  bay  window  coming  broadly 
in  at  his  left  hand,  and  the  hills,  when  he  lifted  his  eyes,  for 
his  help.  The  other,  by  the  fireside,  was  the  arm  chair  into 
which  he  migrated  for  those  last  ten  years  of  patience,  no 
longer  with  his  own  books  but  others'  books  before  him. 
Then,  turning  to  the  chapter  on  his  Music,  you  can  see  the 
chair  by  the  drawing-room  table,  in  which,  making  a  pulpit  of 
it,  he  preached  his  baby  sermon — *'  People,  be  dood  !  " 

But  it  is  about  another  kind  of  chair  that  I  have  more  to 
say  in  this  first  chapter,  if  you  will  forgive  the  pun ;  the 
metaphorical  chair  which  professors  are  supposed  to  fill  at  the 
University.  Ruskin's  was  nominally  that  of  Fine  Art,  but  he 
was  really  a  sort  of  teaching  Teufelsdrockh,  Professor  of 
Things  in  General.  His  chair  stood  on  four  legs,  or  even 
more,  like  some  antique  settles  of  carved  oak  ;  very  unlike  the 
Swiss  milking-stool  of -the  modern  specialist.  Not  that  it 
stood  more  firmly  ;  good  business-folk,  whose  sons  fell  under 
his  influence,  and  dons  with  an  eye  to  college  successes  in  the 
schools,  thought  his  teaching  deplorable  ;  and  from  their  point 
of  view  much  was  to  be  said.  It  cannot  be  denied,  also,  that 
like  the  born  teacher  he  was,  he  sometimes  tried  to  make  silk 
purses  out  of  sows'  ears. 

He  taught  none  of  us  to  paint  saleable  pictures  nor  to 
write  popular  books.  A  pupil  once  asked  him  outright  to  do 
so.  *'  I  hope  you're  not  serious,"  he  replied.  To  learn  the 
artist's  trade  he  definitely  advised  going  to  the  Royal  Academy 
schools  ;  his  drawing  school  at  Oxford  was  meant  for  an  almost 
opposite  purpose — to  show  the  average  amateur  that  really 
Fine  Art  is  a  worshipful  thing,  far  beyond  him  ;  to  be 
appreciated  (and  that  alone  is  worth  while)  after  a  course  of 
training,  but  never  to  be  attained  unless  by  birth-gift. 

At  the  start  this  school,  provided  by  the  Professor  at  his 
own  cost  of  time,  trouble  and  money,  was  well  attended  ;  in 
the  second  year  there  were  rarely  more  than  three  pupils.  It 
was  in  1872  that  I  joined  it,  having  seen  him  before,  introduced 


RUSKIN'S    CHAIR  7 

by  Mr.  Alfred  W.  Hunt,  R.W.S.,  the  landscape  painter. 
Ruskin  asked  to  see  what  I  had  been  doing,  and  I  showed  him 
a  niggled  and  panoramic  bit  of  lake-scenery.  "  Yes,  you  have 
been  looking  at  Hunt  and  Inchbold."  I  hoped  I  had  been 
looking  at  Nature.  "  You  must  learn  to  draw."  Dear  me  ! 
thought  I,  and  I  have  been  exhibiting  landscapes.  '*  And  you 
try  to  put  in  more  than  you  can  manage."  Well,  I  supposed 
he  would  have  given  me  a  good  word  for  that ! 

So  he  set  me  to  facsimile  what  seemed  like  a  tangle  of 
scrabbles  in  charcoal,  and  I  bungled  it.  Whereupon  I  had  to 
do  it  again,  and  was  a  most  miserable  undergraduate.  But  the 
nice  thing  about  him  was  that  he  did  not  say,  "  Go  away  ;  you 
are  no  good  ;  "  but  set  me  something  drier  and  harder  still. 
I  had  not  the  least  idea  what  it  was  all  coming  to  ;  though 
there  was  the  satisfaction  of  looking  through  the  sliding  cases 
between  whiles  at  "  Liber  Studiorum"  plates — rather  ugly,  some 
of  them,  I  whispered  to  myself — and  little  scraps  of  Holbein 
and  Burne-Jones,  quite  delicious,  for  I  had  the  pre-Raphaelite 
measles  badly  just  then,  in  reaction  from  the  water-colour 
landscape  in  which  I  had  been  brought  up.  Only  I  was  too 
ignorant  to  see,  till  he  showed  me,  that  the  virtue  of  real  pre- 
Raphaelite  draughtsmanship  was  in  faithfulness  to  natural  form, 
and  resulting  sensitiveness  to  harmony  of  line  ;  nothing  to  do 
with  sham  mediaevalism  and  hard  contours. 

By-and-by  he  promoted  me  to  Burne- Jones's  *'  Psyche 
received  into  Heaven."  What  rapture  at  the  start,  and  what 
trials  before  that  facsimile  was  completed  !  And  when  all  was 
done,  "  That's  not  the  way  to  draw  a  foot,"  said  a  popular 
artist  who  saw  the  copy.  But  that  was  the  way  to  use  the  pure 
line,  and  who  but  Ruskin  taught  it  at  the  time.'' 

Later,  he  set  painful  tasks  of  morsels  from  Turner,  dis- 
tasteful at  first,  but  gradually  fascinating  ;  for  he  would  not 
let  one  off  before  getting  at  the  bottom  of  the  affair,  whether 
it  was  merely  a  knock-in  of  the  balanced  colour-masses  or  the 
absolute  imitation  of  the  little  wavy  clouds,  an  eighth  of  an 


8  RUSKIN    RELICS 

inch  long,  left  apparently  ragged  by  the  mezzotinter's  scraper. 
All  this  does  not  make  a  professional  picture-painter,  but  such 
teaching  must  have  opened  many  pupils'  eyes  to  certain  points 
in  art  not  universally  perceived. 

That  was  one  leg  of  the  chair  ;  another  was  the  literary  leg. 
He  contemplated  his  "  Bibliotheca  Pastorum,"  anticipating  in 
a  different  form  the  best  hundred  books,  only  there  were  to  be 
far  less.  The  first,  as  suited  in  his  mind  for  country  readers  on 
St.  George's  farms,  was  the  "Economist  "  of  Xenophon,  and  two 
of  his  undergraduate  friends  undertook  the  translation.  Of 
these,  Wedderburn  of  Balliol,  now  K.C.,  and  Ruskin's  literary 
executor,  was  one  ;  and  the  other  was  Montefiore  of  Balliol, 
who  was  already  in  weak  health  (he  did  not  live  long  after 
those  days)  and  passed  on  his  share  in  the  work  to  me.  That 
was  the  beginnmg  of  many  interesting  afternoons  in  Ruskin's 
rooms,  where  I  read  my  bit  of  translation  to  him,  and  he 
compared  it  with  the  Greek,  revising  and  Ruskinising  the 
schoolboy  exercise.  His  method  of  translation  was  quite  new 
to  me.  The  Greek  was  not  to  be  so  turned  into  English  as 
to  lose  its  Greek  flavour  ;  one  should  know  it  for  a  rendering 
out  of  a  foreign  tongue.  The  same  word  in  Greek  was  to  be 
represented  by  the  same  word  in  English.  He  would  have  no 
more  "  freedom  "  in  this  than  in  anything  else.  But  he  came 
down  heavily  on  all  the  catchwords  and  commonplaces  dear  to 
Bohn's  cribs,  and  for  a  phrase  like  "  to  boot "  had  no  mercy. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  invented  quaint  renderings  of  his  own, 
such  as  "  courtesy  "  for  philanthropia.  The  book  is  still  in  print 
for  the  curious  to  read  ;  he  gave  his  translators  the  profits  : 
"  It  will  keep  you  in  raspberry  jam,"  he  said,  and  I  have  had 
a  postal  order  for  my  share  regularly  these  nearly  thirty  years. 
But  the  lesson  one  learns  at  school  in  Latin,  how  to  make 
mosaic  of  words  and  decorative  patterns  of  phrases,  no  master 
ever  tried  to  teach  me  in  English,  as  Ruskin  taught  it  over  the 
tea-cups  in  those  afternoons  at  Corpus. 

There  was  a  third  leg  to  the  chair,  which  we  might  call  the 


RUSKIN'S    CHAIR  9 

dignity  of  labour.  When  his  first  group  of  men  would  not 
draw,  he  made  them  dig  at  Hinksey.  I  was  slack  at  the 
Hinksey  diggings,  but  he  made  me  dig  at  Coniston.  When 
the  Xenophon  was  nearly  ready,  the  translators  were  asked  to 
Brantwood  in  the  summer  of  1875  to  finish  it.  At  my  earliest 
visit,  two  years  before,  he  had  no  harbour  ;  the  boats  were 
exposed  to  the  big  waves  from  the  south-west  storms,  and  it 
was  an  almost  daily  task  for  the  gardeners  to  keep  them 
aground  on  the  shore  and  to  bale  them.  In  '74  he  began 
some  harbour-works,  which  we  were  set  to  complete.  We  dug 
and  built  every  afternoon,  and  enjoyed  it,  though  we  had  not 
time  to  finish  the  job.  After  us  the  local  mason  was  called  in, 
so  that  the  harbour  you  now  see  is  professional  work.  But  he 
bade  them  leave  three  of  my  steps  standing  as  a  monument  of 
that  summer's  doings,  and  there  they  are  to  this  day. 

It  seemed  a  kind  of  joke  to  make  Oxford  men  dig,  and  I 
think  the  Hmksey  work  was  devised  partly  in  despair  of  other- 
wise holding  his  class  together.  But  he  had  reasons  for 
accustoming  them  to  the  labour  by  which  far  the  greater  part 
of  humanity  has  to  live.  Not  to  make  them  into  navvies,  but 
to  give  them  a  respect  for  the  skilled  use  of  a  pick  and  a 
trowel,  was  his  intention  ;  just  as  the  drawing  school  was  not  to 
make  them  artists,  but  to  show  them  how  hard  it  was.  In  his 
own  undergraduate  days  the  yokel  and  the  mob  were  outside 
the  pale  of  the  gownsman's  interests.  There  was  condescending 
charity,  of  course,  and  comradeship  in  sport  with  the  keeper 
and  the  groom  ;  but  "  your  real  gentleman,"  said  Byron, 
"  never  perspires."  On  the  contrary,  said  Ruskin,  when  Adam 
delved,  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  life  was  nearest  to  Edenr 
gates.  "To  draw  hard  breath  over  ploughshare  and  spade" 
was  the  glory  of  living.  And  so,  to  make  these  youngsters 
dig  was  an  object-lesson  in  ethics,  the  first  rudiments  of  human 
fellowship,  which  branched  upward  into  all  the  moralities. 

A  fourth  leg  to  his  chair  was  nature  study.  In  those  days 
"  science  "  was  supposed  to  be  the  only  true  natural  history  : 


/ 
lo  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Gilbert    White    was    out   of  date.     Ruskin's   teaching   was  a 
protest,  and  it  has  prevailed. 

From  any  master  we  learn  no  more  than  we  are  capable  of 
learning,  and  he  never  gave  me  many  of  the  tasks  he  put  upon 
others  of  his  pupils.  Less  for  any  use  he  made  of  it,  but 
always  with  the  suggestion  that  it  was  for  a  practical  end,  he 
set  me  to  draw  glaciers  and  glaciated  rocks  at  Chamouni  ;  on 
the  Coniston  fells  demonstrated  his  method  of  taking  dip  and 
strike  from  any  bit  of  rock  showing  cleavage  and  stratification, 
and  on  his  own  piece  of  moor  made  me  survey  and  elaborate  a 
model  to  scale.  It  was  treated  as  a  form  of  sport,  enjoyable 
as  any  game  ;  but  not  to  be  scamped.  There  was  always  the 
insistence  on  accuracy  above  all  things,  and  fulness  of  observa- 
tion, with  care  about  trifles  which  I  had  not  dreamed  of  before, 
and  never  expected  from  him.  It  was  only  much  later  that  I 
understood,  from  his  note-books  and  sketch-books,  what  an 
immense  amount  of  dry,  hard  work  underlay  the  easy  eloquence 
of  his  paragraphs.  For  instance,  "  Love's  Meinie  "  seems  to 
be  a  slight  performance  ;  but  to  serve  for  it  he  had  a  vast 
collection  of  unstufFed  bird-skins,  and  to  get  at  the  secret  of 
flight  planned  and  commissioned  from  a  skilled  artificer  sets 
of  quill-feathers,  enormously  magnified,  in  exact  imitation  of 
the  true  forms  and  proportions  in  the  bird's  wing.  One  of 
these  is  on  view  in  the  Coniston  museum,  which  holds  so  many 
of  his  relics  ;  a  complete  set  are  still  at  Brantwood.  To  show 
tlfe  village  children  how  the  wheels  of  heaven  go  round,  and 
how  the  stars  have  been  grouped  into  pictures  of  the  world-old 
myths  of  nature,  he  planned  a  revolving  globe  Into  which  you 
could  climb  and  see  a  blue  sky  pierced  for  the  greater  and  the 
lesser  lights,  and  painted  with  the  constellation  figures.  The 
globe  has  perished,  but  the  object-lesson  in  education  remains. 

I  have  mentioned  four  lines  of  his  teaching,  four  legs  to  his 
chair.  Other  traits  of  his  many-sided  mind  are  given  in  the 
following  chapters,  and  even  these  are  not  exhaustive.  They 
will  serve  to  show  him  as  he  was  seen  at  close  quarters,  not 


RUSKIN'S    CHAIR  ii 

merely  through  the  medium  of  print — the  last  of  the  sages, 
lingering  into  an  era  of  specialists.  I  do  not  rate  him  as  an 
infallible  authority,  neither  in  taste,  nor  in  ethics,  nor  in  any- 
thing. But  he  was  a  great  teacher,  because  he  took  you  by  the 
hand  as  he  went  on  his  voyage  of  discovery  through  the  world  ; 
he  made  you  see  what  he  saw,  and  taught  you  to  looic  for 
yourself. 

One  thing  he  never  taught  me  was  to  keep  a  diary.  He 
used  to  lament  how  many  beautiful  sunsets  he  had  not  sketched, 
and  how  many  interesting  facts  he  had  lost  for  want  of  the 
scratch  of  a  pencil.  In  trying  to  recall  these  bygones  one 
begins  to  perceive  their  loss  :  so  little  one  can  save  from  the 
wreckage  of  time.  Once,  when  his  talk  was  rather  confidential, 
I  said,  "  Never  mind,  I'm  not  Boswell  taking  notes."  "  I 
think,"  he  replied,  "  you  might  do  worse." 


II 


RUSKIN'S    "JUMP" 


II 
RUSKIN'S    "JUMP" 

"  Jump  "  was  the  Brantwood  vernacular  for  "Jumping  Jenny" ; 
and  she  was  Ruskin's  own  private,  particular  "  water  sulky,"  as 
the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table  put  it.  There  is  hardly 
any  need  to  say  that  she  was  named  after  the  famous  though 
somewhat  disreputable  brig,  commanded  and  partly  owned  by 
the  late  Anthony  Ewart,  not  unknown  to  readers  of  Ruskin's 
favourite  novel  "  Redgauntlet."  I  do  not  mean  to  commit 
myself  to  any  statement  of  literary  criticism  in  calling  "  Red- 
gauntlet  "  his  favourite  novel,  or  to  imply  that  he  thought  it 
the  best  book  ever  written :  but  it  was  one  which  he  continually 
quoted  in  conversation  and  discussed  with  pleasure  in  his  auto- 
biography. Of  all  the  novels  he  read  in  those  evenings  of 
"  auld  lang  syne,"  when  he  pulled  the  four  candles  close  to 
him  at  the  drawing-room  table,  and  we  sketched  furtively  in 
corners,  Laurence  Milliard  and  I,  and  the  ladies  plied  their 
needles — no  novel  was  read  with  more  delight  and  effect.  It 
was  a  pretty  way  of  passing  the  evening,  but  not  so  easy  to 
imitate  unless  you  have  a  Ruskin  to  read  to  you.  He  had  a 
trick  of  suggesting  the  dramatic  variety  of  the  conversations 
without  trying  to  be  stagey,  and  a  skill  in  "  cutting  "  the  long 
paragraphs  of  Scott's  descriptions  which  made  it  all  as  good  as 
a  play.  He  did  not  make  you  hot  and  ready  to  scream,  as 
many  readers  do  in  their  anxiety  to  act  the  scene. 

Ruskin  was  no  sailor,  and  never  went  for  a  real  voyage  ; 


i6  RUSKIN    RELICS 

but  he  was  very  fond  of  boats  and  shipping,  and  all  that  came 
from  the  sea.  One  of  his  grandfathers  had  been  a  sailor.  As 
far  as  I  can  make  out,  this  grandfather  was  an  East-coast 
skipper  of  small  craft,  very  much  like  one  of  the  captains  of 
"  Many  Cargoes  "  and  "  Sea  Urchins."  He  had  passed  out  of 
this  world  before  John  Ruskin  came  into  it.  and  the  little 
genius  never  had  the  luck  to  hear  sea-stories  and  to  learn  the 
mysteries  of  reef-knots  and  clove-hitch  from  an  old  captain 
grandfather.  It  would  have  been  so  good  for  him  !  But  one 
must  not  forget  that  in  the  making  of  John  Ruskin  there  was 
a  quarter  of  the  blood  of  a  seafarer.  It  is  a  rather  curious  fact, 
also,  and  one  which  has  not,  I  believe,  been  mentioned  in  print, 
that  the  earliest  Ruskin  of  all  was  a  sea  captain.  Mr.  W.  Hutton 
Brayshay  tells  me  that  he  has  found  in  the  Record  Office  a 
notice  of  the  name  in  the  fourteenth  century  ;  this  mediaeval 
Ruskin  was  captain  of  one  of  Edward  III.'s  ships.  We  cannot 
connect  him  with  John  Ruskin's  family,  any  more  than  we  can 
connect  the  Ruskins  of  Dalton-in-Furness  in  the  sixteenth 
century  ;  but  this  identity  of  name  suggests  that  they  may 
have  been  ancestors.  It  is  a  problem  which  can  only  be  solved 
by  research,  but  it  should  be  possible,  if  one  had  time  and 
money  to  work  out  the  pedigree  from  wills  and  registers. 

Turner  was  his  real  teacher  in  seafaring  matters,  giving 
him,  if  nothing  more,  a  true  interest  in  the  look  of  waves  and 
ships.  It  was  for  Turner's  sake  that  he  wrote  the  fine  essay  on 
"  the  boat  in  art  and  poetry  "  which  forms  the  introduction  to 
"Harbours  of  England"  ;  and  this  glorification  of  the  coast 
fishing-craft  and  the  old  ship  of  the  line  was  not  merely  a 
literary  man's  concoction,  but  the  outcome  of  much  study  and 
sketching  at  Deal,  where  he  spent  the  summer  of  1855  to  steep 
himself  in  the  subject.  In  the  early  sixties,  again,  he  stayed 
for  some  time  at  Boulogne  in  lodgings  under  the  sandhills 
north  of  the  pier,  and  made  friends  with  a  French  pilot  and 
mackerel  fisher  who,  after  due  apprenticeship,  actually  pro- 
moted him  to   the  tiller — an  honour  of  which  he  was  really 


RUSKIN'S    "JUMP"  17 

prouder  than  that  election  to  the  membership  of  a  foreign 
Academy  which  he  forgot  to  answer  until  it  was  too  late  to  say 
any  more  about  it. 

So  when  he  came  to  Coniston,  and  had  his  own  house  on 
his  own  lake,  he  could  not  be  without  boats.      There  was  a 


{Sutcliffe,  photographer,  IVhilby) 
BRANTWOOD  HARBOUR   IN   THE  SEVENTIES 


landing-place  on  the  shore  beneath  Brantwood,  shown  in  our 
photograph  as  it  was  in  the  earlier  stages  of  its  development, 
with  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn  and  Miss  Constance  Hilliard  (Mrs. 
W.  H.  Churchill)  on  the  first  primitive  breakwater,  and  Mr. 
Severn's  sailboat  in  the  distance.  Ruskin  did  not  care  for 
lake-sailing  ;  a  busy  man  hardly  has  time  to  wait  for  the 
moving  of  the  water  ;  and  he  got  one  of  the  indigenous  tubs 

B 


i8 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


for  the  diversion  of  rowing.  He  did  not  fish,  and  he  had  the 
greatest  scorn  for  rowing  as  it  is  done  at  Oxford.  "  That's  not 
rowing  ;  that's  galley-slaves'  work  !  "  he  used  to  tell  us.  "  To 
bend  to  the  stroke,  and  time  your  oars  to  the  beat  of  the 
waves,"  was  his  ideal  :  he  liked  going  out  when  there  was  a 
little  sea  on,  and  white   horses;    and  he  would    paddle   away 


{Herbert  Severn,  Esq.,  photographer) 
CONISTON   HALL  AND    BOATHOUSE 


before  the  wind  with  great  enjoyment.  But  when  there  is  a 
little  sea  on,  at  Coniston,  it  means  a  good  deal  of  wind;  though 
the  waves  are  not  very  high  they  gather  a  fair  amount  of  force 
in  their  four  or  five  miles'  career  up  the  long  waterway  ;  and 
the  fun  of  riding  with  them  is  quite  different  from  the  struggle 
of  getting  your  boat  home  again.  Now  Ruskin  was  a  very 
practical  man  in  some  things.  "  When  you  have  too  much  to 
do,  don't  do  it,"  he  used  to  say.  So  after  a  wild  water-gallop, 
he  simply  landed  and  walked  home.     When  the  wind  changed 


(From  a  Sk*tch  by  IV.  C  Colliiii^icjoa) 
RUSKINS  "JUMP"  ADRIFT  OFF  BRANTWOOD 


RUSKIN'S    "JUMP"  21 

he  could  bring  back  his  boat.  There  was  no  use  in  making  a 
pain  of  a  pleasure. 

The  Lake  district  rowing-boat  is  built  for  the  Lake  fisher- 
man, and  it  is  as  neatly  adapted  to  its  purpose  as  the  Windermere 
yacht  which,  for  the  peculiar  winds  and  waters  of  the  place,  is 
pretty  nearly  perfect.  The  fishers  used  to  have  two  chief 
requirements,  whether  they  netted  or  trolled  ;  the  boat  must 
travel  easily  in  lumpy  but  not  violent  water,  for  the  men  had 
far  to  go  in  reaching  their  "  drawing-up  spots,"  and  in  taking 
their  fish  to  market  of  an  evening  ;  and  it  must  carry  a  good 
deal  of  tackle.  In  netting,  there  were  always  two  partners,  and 
so  two  thwarts  and  two  pairs  of  sculls  were  used  ;  in  trolling, 
one  went  out  alone,  but  there  were  rods  and  lines  which  needed 
space  for  convenient  stowage.  Consequently  the  boats  were 
rather  long,  and  rather  low  in  the  water  ;  the  sculls  were  fixed 
on  pins,  so  that  you  could  drop  them  when  you  got  a  bite,  or 
landed  hastily  to  take  the  hair-rope  at  your  end  of  the  net  in 
drawing  up.  Feathering  the  oar  was  quite  unknown  ;  great 
speed  unnecessary  ;  great  stability  desirable  ;  but  not  what  a 
sailor  would  call  seaworthiness.  On  the  whole,  for  pleasure- 
boating  on  the  lakes,  these  boats  are  safe  and  convenient ; 
accidents  are  extremely  rare,  though  hundreds  and  perhaps 
thousands  of  hopelessly  unskilled  people  every  summer  try 
their  hands  at  rowing,  and  do  everything  you  ought  not  to  do 
in  a  boat.  It  is  impossible  to  insist  on  an  experienced  boatman 
going  out  with  every  party,  and  not  always  possible  to  prevent 
overcrowding.  Local  authorities  have  no  powers,  except  to 
hang  life-buoys  (at  their  own  personal  expense)  on  convenient 
points  along  the  shore.  You  will  see  one  of  the  Coniston  parish 
council's  buoys  on  the  boathouse  in  our  photograph  of  the 
Hall  :  but  you  will  be  glad  to  know  that  it  has  hung  there  for 
years  without  being  wanted  for  a  rescue. 

After  some  seasons'  trial  of  the  local  boat,  Ruskin  thought 
he  could  improve  upon  it  for  his  own  purpose.  He  wanted 
something    less   cumbrous  and    more  seaworthy,  and   he  was 


22 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


always  trying  experiments,  uprooting  notions  to  find  how  they 
grew,    planting   them    upside    down   to   see    what   happened. 


(Hargreaves,  photographer) 
THE   RUSKIN   MUSEUM,    CONISTON 


grafting  one  idea  upon  another,  to  the  bewilderment  of 
onlookers.  In  the  matter  of  boats  he  had  a  very  willing  and 
capable  helper  in  Laurence  Hilliard,  who  was  the  cleverest  and 
neatest-fingered   boy  that  ever   rigged   a  model  ;    and  many 


RUSKIN'S    "JUMP"  23 

were  the  models  he  designed  and  finished  with  exquisite  per- 
fection of  detail  in  the  outhouse-workshop  at  Brant  wood. 
Laurie,  as  every  one  called  him,  was  deep  in  Scott  Russell  at 
that  time,  working  away  on  the  ponderous  (and  now  discredited) 
folio  as  if  he  were  getting  it  up  for  an  examination,  and  covering 
sheets  of  cartridge-paper  with  sections  and  calculations.  He 
was  only  too  pleased  to  have  a  hand  in  a  real  job,  and  turned 
out  the  drawings  and  the  model  for  the  new  boat  in  workman- 
like fashion.     This  was  in  1879  or  1880. 

Just  opposite  Brantwood,  across  the  lake,  is  the  old  Coniston 
Hall,  built  in  the  fifteenth  century  as  the  home  of  the  Flemings 
of  Coniston,  but  nearly  two  hundred  years  ago  abandoned  and 
left  to  ruin.  Mrs.  RadclifFe,  who  wrote  the  "  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho  " — known  to  most  readers  nowadays  less  for  itself 
than  as  the  book  that  so  excited  the  heroine  of  *'  Northanger 
Abbey" — about  1794  came  to  Coniston,  and  mistook  the  old 
Coniston  Hall  for  Conishead  Priory,  as  it  seems  :  and  with  an 
odd  fallacy  of  romance  described  the  "  solemn  vesper  that  once 
swelled  along  the  lake  from  those  consecrated  walls,  and 
awakened,  perhaps,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  voyager,  while 
evening  stole  upon  the  scene."  But  she  was  right  enough  in 
being  charmed  with  the  spot,  as  Ruskin  was  in  his  boyish 
visits,  long  before  he  dreamed  of  living — and  dying — in  view 
of  the  old  round  chimneys  among  the  trees,  with  the  ripple 
of  lake  below  and  the  peak  of  the  Old  Man  rising  above. 
Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  ruins  were  fitted  up 
as  a  farm,  and,  somewhat  later,  the  boathouse  close  by 
came  to  be  the  workshop  of  the  man  who  built  Ruskin's 
"Jump." 

Mr.  William  Bell  was  one  of  the  celebrities  of  this  dale.  In 
his  youth  he  had  been  a  sort  of  right-hand  man  of  John  Beever 
of  the  Thwaite,  brother  to  the  ladies  of  '*  Hortus  Inclusus," 
and  author  of  "  Practical  Fly-Fishing."  On  the  death  of  his 
father,  William  Bell  became  the  leading  carpenter  of  the  place, 
and   the   leading   Liberal,  and  during   Mr.    Gladstone's   last 


24  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Administration  he  was  nominated  for  a  Justice  of  the  Peace. 
Ruskin  was  told  of  his  neighbour,  and  sent  word  that  he 
would  like  to  come  and  have  a  talk  about  politics.  Now  the 
carpenter  was  used  to  Conservative  orators  and  Liberal  arguers, 
but  he  knew  that  Ruskin  was  a  different  sort  of  man  ;  and  all 
day  long  before  the  hour  fixed  for  the  visit  he  was  in  a  greatly- 
perturbed  state  of  mind,  walking  up  and  down  and  wondering 
— a  nev/  thing  for  him — how  he  should  tackle  this  unknown 
personality.  At  last  the  distinguished  guest  arrived.  He  was 
solemnly  welcomed  and  shown  into  the  parlour.  The  door 
was  shut  upon  the  twain.  The  son  (Mr.  John  Bell),  who  felt 
he  had  brought  into  contact  the  irresistible  force  and  the 
irremovable  post,  waited  about  hoping  it  would  be  all  right, 
but  in  much  trepidation  as  the  sound  of  talk  inside  rose  from 
a  murmur  to  a  rumble,  and  from  a  rumble  to  a  roar.  At  last 
his  father's  well-known  voice  came  through  the  partition  in  no 
trembling  accents  :  "  Ye're  wrong  to  rags,  Mr.  Ruskin  1  " 
Then  he  knew  it  was  all  right,  and  went  about  his  work.  And 
after  that  Ruskin  and  "  aid  Will  Bell "  were  firm  friends  in 
spite  of  differences. 

So  Will  Bell  built  the  "  Jump  " — or,  to  be  accurate,  was 
master-builder,  employing  at  this  job  Mont.  Barrow,  well 
known  to  boat-owners  on  Windermere  for  one  of  the  most 
skilful  of  craftsmen,  as  his  father  was  before  him — and  one  fine 
day  in  spring  she  was  launched  at  the  boat-house  with  great 
ceremony.  A  wreath  of  daffodils  was  hung  round  her  bows, 
and  Miss  Martha  Gale  christened  her,  with  this  little  versicle 
which  Ruskin  made  for  the  occasion  : 

Waves  give  place  to  thee  ! 
Heaven  send  grace  to  thee  ! 
Fortune  to  ferry 
Kind  hearts  and  merry  ! 

There  was  one  strange  face  In  the  group,  one  uninvited 
visitpr.      The   people  then   at  the  Hall  were    not    successful 


RUSKIN'S    "JUMP"  25 

managers,  though  they  had  interested  Ruskin,  perhaps  more 
through  the  idylHc  prettiness  of  their  homestead  than  otherwise. 
He  had  helped  to  stave  off  the  failure  by  lending  them  ;^300, 
which  they  proposed  to  pay  in  geese  !  And  the  stranger  at  the 
launch  was  the  man  in  possession.  Alas  !  for  "  these  conse- 
crated walls,"  and  the  disillusionments  of  our  Arcadia.  Per- 
haps it  is  wise  to  add,  in  plain  words,  that  twenty  years  have 


{flar^eavci,  photographer) 
TRIAL   MODEL  FOR  THE   "JUMPING  JENNY" 

wrought  changes  at  the  Hall,  and  that  the  present  tenants  are 
quite  different  people. 

The  "  Jump,"  so  launched  at  last,  was  always  Ruskin'sown 
boat,  for  his  private  particular  use.  Sometimes  as  a  special 
honour  the  favoured  guest  was  sent  across  the  lake  in  her,  rather 
than  in  a  common  boat ;  but  to  say  the  truth,  if  it  wasn't  for 
the  honour  of  the  thing,  as  the  Irishman  remarked  when  the 
bottom  of  the  sedan-chair  came  out,  we  had  as  soon  walk 
round.  She  rode  the  waves  beautifully,  but  you  didn't  seem 
to  get  forrarder  with  her.  Perhaps  it  was  the  fallacy  of  the 
Scott  Russell  lines  that  made  her  heavy,  or  must  we  put  all  the 
blame  upon  Ruskin  ?  He  tried  to  build  a  boat  that  would  sail 
and  row  equally  well,  and  that  is  not  easy.  She  was  never 
sailed,  though  the  model,  now  in   the  Coniston   Museum,  is 


26  RUSKIN    RELICS 

rigged.  The  "  Jump,"  still  on  the  water  and  often  used,  is 
treasured,  I  think,  chiefly  as  a  relic — Ruskin's  flagship.  When 
she  is  repainted,  the  old  pattern  round  the  gunwale,  his 
device,  and  the  brilliant  blue,  his  favourite  colour,  are 
always  reproduced,  and  she  looks  sound  enough  to  outlast 
us  all. 

At  a  later  time,  when  he  was  staying  at  Sandgate  (1887- 
88),  he  reverted  to  his  fondness  for  boating,  and  had  several 
very  beautiful  models  built  and  rigged  by  Charles  Dalby,  of 
Folkestone,  a  past-master  in  the  mystery.  These  models — 
the  old  Dover  packet,  old-style  cutter  and  yawl,  and  so  forth — 
are  still  at  Brantwood. 

In  the  spring  of  1882,  during  a  visit  to  London,  Mr. 
Froude  described  to  him  the  discovery  of  a  Viking  ship, 
which  roused  great  interest.  Writing  home,  he  sketched  it 
endwise  and  sidewise,  with  notes  of  its  construction,  and — 
"  Froude  told  me  she  had  a  horse  at  the  head."  To  most  of 
his  readers  Ruskin  has  been  exclusively  the  arm-chair  philo- 
sopher, the  dilettante  of  prints  and  pictures  ;  but  there  was  a 
vein  of  the  old  blood  In  him,  as  in  the  rest  of  us,  which 
warmed  to  the  rough  sea-life  that  created  Venice  (read  his  prose 
poem  thereon  in  "  Modern  Painters,"  vol.  v.,  "  The  Wings  of 
the  Lion  "),  and  England  : — "  Bare  head,  bare  fist,  bare  foot, 
and  blue  jacket.  If  these  will  not  save  us,  nothing  will."  He 
has  told  me  of  talks  with  Carlyle,  who  regretted  he  had  not 
taken  up  the  Kings  of  Norway  earlier  in  life,  instead  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  and  spent  his  better  strength  upon  the 
better  subject  ;  and  Ruskin  himself,  though  too  late  for 
evidences  of  the  taste  to  appear  in  his  writings,  liked  to  hear 
of  our  seafaring  ancestors  of  the  North.  It  was  a  touch  of 
this  feeling  that  made  him  so  scornful  of  "  sailing-machines," 
not  calling  them  boats  at  all.  He  would  not  even  have  a 
boat-house  for  his  "  Jump  "  ;  it  would  be  too  like  yachting,  and 
she  must  lie  on  the  beach,  in  open  harbour,  in  the  good  old 
way.     When  we  used  to  laugh  at  Laurence  Hilliard's  "  Snail," 


RUSKIN'S    "JUMP"  27 

a  Morecambe  Bay  fisherman's  craft  that  wouldn't  go,  Ruskin 
always  took  her  part.  "  You  boys  can't  be  content  unless  you 
are  going  fast.  I  won't  have  her  called  the  '  Snail' ;  she  is — " 
and  this  with  his  own  peculiar  lifting  emphasis — "  a  Real  Sea 
Boat." 


Ill 


RUSKIN'S    GARDENING 


Ill 
RUSKIN'S    GARDENING 


There  are  two  quite  different  sorts  of  garden  lovers — those 
who  raise  flowers,  and  those  who  look  for  the  landscape  effect. 
I  shall  be  scolded  for  saying  so,  but  the  first  often  make  their 
gardens  into  museums  ;  very  interesting,  no  doubt,  but  not  so 
pleasant  to  live  with  as  the  half-wild  bit  of  ground — lawn, 
trees  and  shrubbery,  without  a  pane  of  glass  in  evidence — where 
there  are  just  enough  flowers,  hardy  perennials  perhaps,  to  give 
a  touch  of  colour  in  their  season,  but  in  the  main  a  sense  of 
green  repose.  I  think  the  garden  which  the  Lord  planted 
eastward  in  Eden  was  like  that ;  a  pleasance,  where  He  could 
walk  in  the  cool  of  the  evening  with  Adam,  and  Adam  had  no 
need  to  run  away,  every  minute,  to  look  for  slugs. 

Ruskin,  though  he  wrote  about  botany,  and  tried  to  be  his 
own  Linnaeus,  and  though  he  loved  well  enough  to  see  flowers 
(especially  wild  ones)  on  his  table  and  outside  his  window,  yet  in 
his  practical  gardening  was  quite  the  landscapist.  He  liked 
making  paths  and  contriving  pretty  nooks,  building  steps  and 
bridges,  laying  out  beds,  woodcutting  and  so  forth  ;  but  I  never 
remember  him  potting  and  grafting  and  layering  and  budding ; 
and  as  to  the  rarity  of  any  plants  in  his  garden,  I  believe  he 
took  far  more  pleasure  in  the  wood-anemone — Silvia,  he 
called  it — than  in  anything  buyable  from  the  nurseryman's 
catalogue. 

The  Brantwood  gardens  as  they  now  are,  enlarged  and 


32  RUSKIN    RELICS 

tended  by  a  mistress  who  loves  and  understands  flowers,  and 
glorified  by  their  charming  position  on  the  shore  of  a  mountain 
lake,  are  as  near  the  perfect  blend  of  detailed  interest  and 
picturesque  beauty  as  anything  can  be  in  this  northern  climate. 
But  they  are  not  Ruskin's  gardens.  When  the  first  glass-house 
went  up,  he  used  to  apologise  for  it  to  his  visitors  ;  it  was  to 
please  Mrs.  Severn  ;  it  was  to  grow  a  few  grapes  for  his 
friends  ;  he  did  not  believe  in  hot- houses  :  and  he  would  take 
you  up  the  steps  he  had  contrived  at  the  back  of  the  house 
and  point  out  the  tiny  wild  growths  in  their  crannies,  as  he  led 
the  way  to  his  own  private  plot. 

Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  in  a  pleasant  essay  on  Japanese  rock- 
gardens,  quoting  Ruskin  on  the  beauty  of  stones,  wonders 
whether  he  would  not  have  sympathised  in  these  quaint  tastes 
of  the  Far  East.  Ruskin  had  little  to  say  in  praise  of  Japanese 
art  as  he  knew  it,  because  they  could  not  draw  pretty  figures, 
and  he  had  no  admiration  for  dwarfs  or  monsters  ;  but  one 
cannot  help  thinking  that  if  he  had  seen  Japan,  and  if  it  is  all 
that  travellers  tell  us,  he  might  have  written  some  enthusiastic 
passages  on  a  people  who  love  stones  for  their  own  sake  and 
tub  themselves  daily.  To  him,  his  rock  gardens  were  a  joy 
for  ever  ;  and  in  his  working  years  he  set  an  example  of  Lake- 
district  landscape-gardening  which  still,  for  all  I  know,  remains 
unfollowed,  and  is  worth  a  few  paragraphs  of  record.  You 
can  see  little  of  it  now.  During  that  last  decade,  when  he 
wandered  about  his  small  domain  like  the  ghost  of  his  former 
self,  no  one  could  carry  on  his  work.  The  paths  he  made  and 
tended  gradually  became  overgrown,  the  rocky  watercourses 
were  choked  with  stones,  his  private  plot  filled  with  weeds,  for 
he  could  no  longer  dig  in  it  ;  and  now  you  can  only  trace 
what  it  has  been  in  the  little  solitude  left  sacred  to  memory. 

It  was  in  the  heart  of  the  wood,  approached  by  the  steps 
and  winding  path — not  gravelled,  but  true  woodland  track. 
About  as  large  as  a  cottager's  kitchen-garden,  it  was  fenced  on 
two  sides  with  a  wooden  paling,  and  an  old  stone  wall,  mossy 


THE    WATERFALL  AT  BRANTWOOD  DOOR.     By  L.  J.  Hilliakd,  1885 


RUSKIN'S    GARDENING  35 

and  ivied,  kept  off  the  trees  and  their  undergrowth  on  the 
higher  side,  up  the  hill.  The  trees,  when  he  came,  were  the 
coppice  of  the  country,  oak  and  hazel,  periodically  cut  down 
to  the  stubs,  and  used  for  turning  bobbins  and  burning  charcoal. 
This  clearance  is  always  a  sad  thing  for  the  moment,  when  the 
leafy  thicket  is  rased  away,  leaving  bare  earth  and  hacked 
stumps  and  the  toppings  strewn  about  to  rot  into  soil  ;  but 
next  spring  there  are  sure  to  be  galaxies  of  primroses,  if  not 
daffodils  and  bluebells  to  follow,  and  foxgloves  as  the  summer 
goes  on  ;  and  so  the  kindness  of  nature  heals  the  wound. 
Next  year  there  are  shoots  from  the  stubs,  a  miniature  forest 
which  might  even  attract  a  Japanese  ;  and  as  the  saplings  grow 
the  flowers  thin  out,  until  in  two  or  three  seasons  the  children 
wonder  why  there  are  no  primroses  in  the  primrose-wood,  and 
cannot  believe  they  are  gone  to  sleep  for  ten  years.  In  the 
plantations  of  larch  and  timber  trees  the  great  bracken  takes 
the  place  of  this  aftergrowth  of  flowerets,  shooting  up  six  or 
eight  feet  high  where  a  clearing  gives  it  a  chance,  and  then 
again  dwindles  as  the  trees  regain  their  strength,  until  under  a 
well-grown  larchwood  there  is  nothing  but  a  soft,  deep,  tressy 
grass,  not  rank  and  full  tinted  like  the  sward  of  the  meadows, 
but  grey-green  and  delicate  and  dry,  though  so  thick  and  rich 
that  there  is  no  easier  couch  for  a  woodland  dreamer. 

When  Ruskin  came  to  Brantwood  he  would  have  his 
coppice  cut  no  more.  He  let  it  grow,  only  taking  off  the 
weaker  shoots  and  dead  wood.  It  spindled  up  to  great  tall 
stems,  slender  and  sinuous,  promising  no  timber,  and  past 
the  age  for  all  commercial  use  or  time-honoured  wont. 
Neighbours  shook  their  heads,  but  they  did  not  know  the 
pictures  of  Botticelli,  and  Ruskin  had  made  his  coppice  into 
an  early  Italian  altar-piece.  Among  those  slender-pillared 
aisles  you  would  not  be  surprised  to  see  goddesses  appear 
out  of  the  green  depths  ;  and  looking  westward,  the  sun- 
dazzle  of  the  lake  and  the  dark  blue  of  the  mountains 
gazed  in  between  the  leaves.     It  was  what  the  old  Venetians 


36  RUSKIN    RELICS 

had  seen  in  landward  holidays  and  tried  to  remember  for  their 
backgrounds.  That  in  itself  was  one  form  of  Ruskin's 
gardening.  To  keep  his  forest  at  this  delightful  point  of 
mystery,  his  billhook  and  gloves  were  always  lying  on  the  hall 
table,  and  after  the  morning's  writing  he  would  go  up  to  the 
Brant  (steep)  Wood  and  chop  for  half  an  hour  before  luncheon. 
It  was  not  the  heroic  axe-work  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  but  such 
pruning  as  a  Garden  of  Eden  required  to  dress  it  and  to  keep  it. 

Then  in  that  private  plot  he  had  his  espalier  of  apples  and 
a  little  gooseberry  patch  and  a  few  standard  fruit-trees  and 
some  strawberries,  mixed  with  flowers.  In  one  corner  there 
were  beehives  in  the  old-fashioned  penthouse,  trailed  over  with 
creepers.  The  fourth  side  was  unfenced,but  parted  from  the  wood 
by  a  deep  and  steep  watercourse,  a  succession  of  cascades  (unless 
the  weather  were  dry,  which  is  not  often  the  case  at  Coniston) 
over  hard  slate  rock.  He  used  sometimes  humorously  to 
complain  of  the  trouble  it  cost  him  to  keep  the  beck  clear  of 
stones,  and  he  could  deduce  you  many  a  lesson  in  geology  on 
the  way  his  rivulet  filled,  rather  than  deepened,  its  bed. 

It  was  crossed  by  a  rough  wooden  bridge.  I  remember  at 
the  building  of  this  bridge  he  was  considerably  annoyed  because 
the  workman,  thinking  to  please  him  with  unusually  rude  lines, 
had  made  the  planks  so  flimsy  that  it  was  hardly  safe.  He 
insisted  on  solidity  and  security,  though  his  stone  steps  were 
so  irregular  as  to  contradict  all  the  rules  which  bid  you  make 
stairs  in  a  flight  equal,  for  fear  of  tripping  your  passenger. 

Over  the  bridge  and  within  the  wood  there  were  frequent 
hummocks  and  bosses  of  rock  pushing  through  the  soil,  and 
each  with  its  special  interest  of  fern  or  flower.  Many  a  visitor 
must  have  recalled  or  repeated — 

Who  loved  the  little  rock,  and  set 
Upon  its  head  the  coronet  ? 

while  Ruskin  led  the  way,  pointing  out  each  trail  of  ivy  (con- 
volvulus not  allowed  for  fear  of  strangling  the  stems)  and  nest 


RUSKIN'S    GARDENING  39 

of  moss,  as  a  gardener  of  the  other  species  might  point  out 
his  orchids.  Then  suddenly  forth  of  the  wood  you  came  upon 
the  tennis-lawn — another  concession  to  youthful  visitors,  for 
he  played  no  athletic  games.  But  in  the  creation  of  this  glade 
he  took  the  keenest  delight,  believing,  as  he  said,  in  diggings 
of  all  sorts.  He  was  the  engineer,  and  the  work  was  done  in 
great  part  by  the  young  people  who  were  to  play  tennis  on 
the  ground  when  it  was  levelled — a  rather  distant  hope,  but 
eventually  fulfilled.  The  tall,  thin  saplings  have  run  up  higher 
and  higher  all  round  the  green  :  on  one  side  you  look  through 
their  veil  to  the  long  expanse  of  lake  ;  on  the  other,  up  the 
dark,  wooded  hill ;  and  on  a  sunny  afternoon  it  has  a  curious 
touch  of  poetry.  There  is  no  statue  on  a  pedestal  or  fountain 
playing  in  a  basin,  but  on  the  mossy  bank,  beneath  the 
graceful  lines  of  virginal  forestry,  Decamerons  might  have 
been  told.  It  is  an  oasis  in  the  North-country  farmer's 
neighbourhood,  this  Lake  district  which  the  tripper  thinks 
just  "country"  as  God  made  it,  quoting  Cowper,  and  not 
dreaming  of  the  "  native's  "  view  that  the  land  is  an  unroofed 
mutton-factory,  with  every  inch  of  it  "  proputty,  proputty, 
proputty." 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  Ruskin's  gardening  was 
wilfully  anti-utilitarian.  The  charm  of  it  was  that  it  brought 
the  natural  advantages  and  local  usages  into  a  new  light,  with 
just  the  refinement  of  feeling  which  made  a  flight  of  steps  into 
a  rock-garden  and  a  tennis-ground  into  a  Purist  painter's  glade. 
Who  but  he  would  have  planted  his  field  with  narcissus,  scat- 
tered thinly  among  the  grass,  to  surprise  you  with  a  reminiscence 
of  Vevey  ?  And  in  the  old  garden  below,  though  he  did  not 
create  it,  you  can  trace  his  feeling  in  the  terraced  zigzag  of 
paths,  hedged  with  apple  and  the  cotoneaster  which  flourishes 
at  Coniston,  and  filled  in  with  sloping  patches  of  strawberry 
and  gooseberry.  The  average  proprietor  would  have  levelled 
his  walks  and  capped  his  dwarf  wails  with  flat  slabs.  This 
irregularity  and  cottage-garden  business  would  have   ofl^ended 


40  RUSKIN    RELICS 

those  new-comers  who  buy  a  bit  of  nature  at  the  Lakes  and 
improve  away  all  its  beauties. 

It  was  in  the  late  'seventies,  when  the  first  illness  had  forced 
him  to  spend  most  of  his  time  at  Brantwood,  and  in  the  early 
'eighties,  before  final  illness  put  an  end  to  his  activity,  that 
Ruskin,  having  completed  his  woodland  paths  and  gardens,  and 
all  the  '*  diggings  "  at  his  harbour,  went  higher  up  the  hill  for 
new  worlds  to  conquer.  His  bit  of  moor  above  the  wood  was 
opened  out  into  a  new  sort  of  garden,  quite  as  charming  in  its 
way  as  any  other.  It  was  a  steep  patch  of  hillside  grandly 
overlooking  the  lake,  with  a  foreground  of  foliage  below  and  a 
background  of  mountains  above  ;  but  as  Nature  left  it — or 
rather  as  Nature  made  it  after  the  original  wild  growth  of  oak 
and  birch  and  holly  had  been  cleared  away  by  the  charcoal- 
burners  and  sheep-farmers  of  past  centuries.  Strongly  marked 
ridges  of  slate-rock  cropped  out  slantwise,  across  and  across 
the  slope,  their  backs  tufted  over  with  heather  and  juniper,  and 
their  hollows  holding  water  in  sodden  quagmires.  Down  the 
slope,  from  the  bogs  of  the  great  moor  behind,  rising  to  a 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea  in  some  places,  there  were  two 
little  streamlets  which  leapt  the  ridges  and  pooled  in  the 
hollows  among  ferns  and  mosses.  All  the  green  fields  and 
farms  of  the  dalesmen  were  once  made  out  of  such  ground, 
and  many  of  them  at  quite  as  great  a  height ;  indeed  the 
actual  elevation  of  this  plot  nowhere  reaches  five  hundred  feet. 
The  problem  was  to  take  advantage  of  whatever  useful  features 
the  site  afforded  without  destroying  its  native  charm.  To 
drain  and  clear  an  intake  and  put  it  under  grass,  or  to  plant  it 
outright,  had  been  done  before  ;  but  that  was  to  do  away  with 
the  moorland  character  altogether.  Just  as  a  portrait-painter 
studies  to  pose  his  sitter  in  such  a  light  and  in  such  an 
attitude  as  to  bring  out  the  most  individual  points  and  get  the 
revelation  of  a  personality,  so  Ruskin  studied  his  moor,  to 
develop  its  resources. 

First,  there  were  the  streams  ;  and  his  old  theory  of  saving 


RUSKIN'S    GARDENING  43 

the  water  suggested  impounding  the  trickle  in  a  series  of 
reservoirs  ;  it  might  be  useful  in  case  of  drought  or  fire.  So 
we  were  marshalled  with  pick  and  spade  every  fair  afternoon 
to  the  "  Board  of  Works,"  as  we  called  it  ;  and  the  old  game 
of  the  Hinksey  diggings  was  played  over  again.  For  what 
reason  I  never  clearly  understood,  juniper  was  condemned  on 
the  moor  as  convolvulus  in  the  wood ;  and  every  savin-bush, 
as  it  is  called  in  the  district,  was  to  be  uprooted,  while  the 
heather  was  treasured,  in  spite  of  the  farmers'  rule  to  burn  the 
heather  off",  now  and  then,  for  the  sake  of  the  grass  which 
grows,  for  a  while,  in  its  place.  Ruskin  always  regretted  these 
heather  fires,  for  they  do  not  really  make  good  grass-land, 
while  they  ruin  the  natural  garden  of  ling  and  bell-heather. 

When  the  basins  were  formed  he  found  to  his  regret  that 
no  mere  earthen  bank  would  hold  the  water  ;  and  skilled  labour 
had  to  be  called  in  to  build  dams  of  stone  and  cement,  less 
pretty  than  the  concealed  dyke  he  had  intended.  But  there 
was  some  consolation  in  devising  sluices  and  clever  gates  with 
long  lever  handles,  artistically  curved,  to  shut  and  open  the 
slit.  One  would  have  thought,  sometimes,  to  see  his  eagerness 
over  these  inventions,  that  he  had  missed  his  vocation  ;  and  he 
had  indeed  a  keen  admiration  for  the  civil  engineer,  wherever 
the  road  and  bridge,  mine  and  harbour,  did  not  come  into  open 
conflict  with  natural  beauties  which  he  thought  just  as  essential 
to  human  life  as  the  material  advantages  of  business.  And 
when  his  reservoirs  were  made,  it  was  a  favourite  entertainment 
to  send  up  somebody  to  turn  the  water  on  and  produce  a 
roaring  cascade  among  the  laurels  opposite  the  front  door. 

Next,  to  illustrate  his  theory  of  reclaiming  wastes,  he  set 
about  his  moorland  garden.  At  the  upper  corner  of  this 
beck-course  there  was  one  ragged  bit  of  ground  against  the 
fence  wall.  From  the  more  rocky  parts  we  were  set  to  carry 
the  soil  to  make  terraces,  which  we  walled  up  with  the  rough 
stones  found  in  plenty  under  the  surface.  One  wetter  patch 
was  planted  with  cranberries,  and  some  apple-  and  cherry-trees 


44  RUSKIN     RELICS 

were  put  in,  where  the  soil  was  deep  and  drainage  provided. 
No  wall  or  wire  parted  this  little  space  of  tillage  from  the 
wilder  moor  and  its  rabbits,  for  the  design  was  to  enlarge  the 
cultivated  area  and  make  the  moor  a  paradise  of  terraces  like 
the  top  of  the  purgatorial  mount  in  Dante  ;  and  since  this 
fragment  of  an  experiment  was  completed,  when  strength  no 
longer  allowed  him  to  stride  up  to  this  once  favourite  height, 
the  whole  has  been  left  to  Nature  again.  The  apple-trees 
grew,  but  untended  ;  they  still  blossom.  The  cherries  have 
run  wild  and  are  left  to  the  birds.  The  rough  steps  from  the 
rock-platform  to  the  orchard  terrace  are  disjointed,  and  fern  is 
creeping  through  the  grass. 

But  yet  from  out  the  little  hill 
Oozes  the  slender  springlet  still, 

as  it  did  in  those  old  Brantwood  days  when  we  picked  and 
shovelled  together,  first  unearthing  its  miniature  ravine  ;  and 
as  perhaps  it  may — for  no  one  can  foretell  the  fate  of  any 
sacred  spot — when  the  pilgrim  of  the  future  tries  to  identify 
by  its  help  alone  the  whereabouts  of  Ruskin's  deserted  garden. 


IV 


RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD 


IV 

RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD 


In  the  Life  of  Ruskin  three  pages  are  given  to  his  tour  abroad 
in  1882,  a  journey  of  importance  to  him,  because  at  a  critical 
moment  it  gave  him  a  new  lease  of  life,  and  of  unusual  interest 
to  his  biographer,  who  accompanied  him  as  secretary,  which  is 
to  say  "  man-jack-of-all-trades."  In  such  companionship  much 
personality  comes  out  ;  aad  the  gossip  of  this  period,  at  greater 
length  than  the  proportions  of  a  biography  allowed,  may  help 
to  fill  in  some  of  the  details  of  his  portrait. 

Very  much  broken  down  in  health,  despairing  of  himself 
and  his  mission,  he  left  London  on  Thursday,  August  10, 
1882.  Calais  Tower  roused  none  of  the  old  enthusiasm  ;  he 
said  rather  bitterly,  "  I  wonder  how  I  came  to  write  about  it." 
But  even  in  his  depression  the  habit  of  work  made  him  sketch 
once  more  the  tracery  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  He  found  out 
the  trick  of  its  geometrical  pattern,  and  explained  it,  delighted. 
Then  the  old  chef  2^  the  Hotel  Dessein  was  still  in  the  flesh,  and 
remembered  former  visits  and  sent  up  a  capital  dinner  ;  so  the 
first  day  on  foreign  soil  augured  hopefully. 

On  the  Saturday  he  woke  up  to  sunshine  at  Laon,  and 
took  me  round  the  town,  setting  me  to  work  on  various 
points.  He  began  a  drawing  of  the  cathedral  front,  which  he 
finished  on  the  Monday  before  leaving.  It  was  always  rather 
wonderful  how  he  would  make  use  of  every  moment,  even 
when  ill-health  and  the  fatigue  of  travelling  might  seem  a  good 


48  RUSKIN    RELICS 

reason  for  idling.  At  once  on  arriving  anywhere  he  was  ready 
to  sketch,  and  up  to  the  minute  of  departure  he  went  on  with 
his  drawing  unperturbed.  In  the  afternoons  he  usually  dropped 
the  harder  work  of  the  morning,  and  went  for  a  ramble  out 
into  the  country  ;  at  Laon  the  hayfields  and  pear  orchards 
south  of  the  town  gave  him,  it  seemed,  just  as  much  pleasure 
as  Chamouni. 

Reims  bored  him  ;  the  cathedral  he  called  confectioner's 
Gothic,  and  he  could  not  get  rid  of  the  idea  of  champagne  and 
all  the  vanities  and  vulgarities  which  hang  on  to  the  very  word. 
There  was  an  ugly  prison,  too,  put  up  next  the  cathedral ;  and 
even  St.  Remi  did  not  make  amends.  So  he  hastened  on  to 
Troyes,  spending  a  few  hours  between  trains  at  Chalons,  where 
we  "  did  "  the  town  in  the  regular  tourist  fashion,  finding, 
however,  beautiful  features  of  early  Gothic  at  Notre  Dame 
and  the  Madeleine. 

At  Troyes  he  spent  the  i  yth,  sketching  hard  at  St.  Urbain 
and  the  cathedral,  and  next  morning  reached  Sens,  a  place  loved 
of  old  for  associations  with  parents  and  friends,  and  not  less  for 
its  little  gutter-brooks  in  the  streets,  which  he  pointed  out  with 
a  sort  of  boyish  glee.  The  afternoon  walk  in  the  valley  of  the 
Yonne  and  up  the  chalk  hills  brought  much  talk  of  the  geology 
of  flints  and  the  especial  charm  of  coteau  scenery,  which  he 
said  had  never  been  cared  for  until  Turner  saw  it  and  glorified 
this  comparatively  humble  aspect  of  mountains  in  the  "  Rivers 
of  France."  He  set  me  to  draw  the  defaced  statues  on  the 
porch  of  the  cathedral,  the  "  finest  north  of  Alps  "  he  declared  ; 
but  we  were  getting  on  rather  too  fast,  and  he  began  to  feel 
the  reaction  of  fatigue.  The  weather  was  sultry,  and  on  the 
19th  our  journey  to  Avallon  was  followed  by  distant  thunder- 
storms. 

At  Avallon  he  stayed  till  the  end  of  the  month.  The 
place  was  new  to  him,  but  I  think  he  was  attracted  to  it  by  one 
of  those  obscure  associations  which  so  often  ran  in  his  mind 
— it  must  be  interesting  because  it  was  named  Avallon — Avalon 


RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD  49 

he  called  it  always,  dominated  by  the  Idea  of  the  island-valley 
of  repose  where  King  Arthur  found  the  immortality  of 
fairyland.  The  first  morning's  work  at  the  early  church  of 
St.  Ladre,  and  the  first  afternoon's  walk  down  the  valley  of  the 
Cousin,  with  brilliant  ling  in  blossom  among  bold  red  granite 
rocks,  fully  justified  his  choice.  The  town,  on  its  Durham- 
like hill,  swept  round  by  the  deep  river-course,  and  unspoilt 
by  modernisms,  and  the  wooded,  flowery,  rocky  neighbourhood, 
full  of  all  that  is  most  charming  in  French  scenery — there  are 
Roman  remains,  too,  but  of  these  he  took  less  note — and  the 
curious  details  of  the  twelfth-century  church  all  attracted  him 
mightily.  The  only  drawback  was  the  weather,  which  broke 
down  with  the  thunder  and  gave  us  cold  east  winds  and  dark 
haze,  in  which  sketching  was  a  penance.  This  told  upon  him 
at  once  ;  he  even  dined  alone,  wearied  out  of  evenings,  and 
still  trying  to  fix  his  mind  on  the  writing  work  he  always  took 
with  him — in  this  instance  the  new  edition  of  *'  Sesame  and 
Lilies  "  and  the  "  Bible  of  Amiens."  He  burned  the  candle 
at  both  ends  ;  out  early  to  draw  elusive  detail  of  battered 
sculptures,  walking  far  in  the  afternoon,  and  writing  hard  at 
night,  impatient  of  remonstrance  even  from  those  who  were 
much  better  qualified  to  order  him  about  than  a  secretary. 

To  meet  him  here  came  Mr.  Frank  Randal,  who  was 
employed  on  drawings  for  "  St.  George's  Work,"  and  making 
bright,  sunny  sketches  in  which  the  neatest  of  outline  was 
reconciled  with  the  freshest  of  colouring.  Also  came  his  friend, 
Mr.  Maundrell,  to  whom  1  take  this  chance  of  oflFering  an 
apology  which  makes  me  blush  to  record.  Among  Ruskin's 
drawings  was  one,  much  In  his  Proutesque  style,  of  a  chapel  at 
Rue,  near  Abbeville.  It  had  been  passed  as  his,  when  Mrs. 
Severn  went  through  the  portfolios  with  him,  noting  the  subjects 
on  the  back  of  the  mounts  ;  and — with  some  hesitation,  I 
confess,  and  neglect  of  the  good  rule  "  When  In  doubt,  don't " 
— It  was  shown  at  both  Ruskin  Exhibitions  as  a  work  by  the 
master,  and  greatly  admired.     Too  late  for  correction,  it  was 

D 


50  RUSKIN    RELICS 

found  to  be  Mr.  Maundrell's.  Others  have  nearly  caught 
Ruskin's  style  at  times — "  Bunney's,  not  mine,"  he  has  written 
on  sketches  by  an  assistant,  for  this  very  reason ;  but  for 
all  the  more  important  drawings  there  is  a  good  pedigree,  and 
most  of  the  smaller  bits  which  have  been  shown  or  published 
have  come  from  his  sketch-books. 

One  good  excursion  from  Avallon  was  to  the  church  of 
Vezelay,  the  twelfth-century  place  elaborately  restored  by 
VioUet-le-Duc,  and  interesting  for  the  meeting  of  Richard 
Coeur-de-Lion  with  the  other  leaders  of  the  Crusade  famous  in 
"  Ivanhoe"  and  "  The  Talisman."  To  Ruskin  any  restoration 
meant  ruin  ;  but  as  he  went  round  the  aisles,  disdainful  at  first 
but  gradually  warming  to  the  intelligence  and  skill  of  the  great 
modern  architect,  he  confessed  that  if  restoration  might  be 
done  at  all  it  could  not  be  better  done.  What  pleased  him 
much  more  was  a  hunt,  on  the  way  back,  for  the  exact  spot 
where  the  Avallon  granite  joined  the  limestone  ;  he  found  the 
two  rocks  side  by  side  in  a  hummock  near  the  road,  and  was 
triumphant. 

Montreal  was  another  place  of  pilgrimage,  and  there  the 
church  with  quaint  wood-carvings  and  the  picturesque  village 
gave  him  a  happy  day.  In  his  diary  (on  which  see  the  next 
chapter)  he  scolded  himself,  after  this  excursion,  for  forgetting 
the  good  times  ;  of  a  walk  in  the  rain  to  the  little  oratory  of 
St.  Jean  des  Bons  Hommes  he  said  :  *'  I  ought  to  vignette  it 
for  a  title  to  my  books  !  "  and  of  the  Avallon  neighbourhood 
he  notes  :  "  Altogether  lovely,  and  like  Dovedale  and  the 
Meuse  and  the  glens  of  Fribourg  in  all  that  each  has  of  best, 
and  like  Chamouni  in  granite  cleavage,  and  like — itself,  in 
sweet  French  looks  and  ways.  .  .  .  The  miraculous  fairy 
valley  .  .  .  one  of  the  sweetest  ever  made  by  heaven.  The 
Cyclopean  walls,  of  blocks  seven  and  eight  feet  long,  and  three 
feet  thick — the  largest — all  averaging  two  and  a  half  (feet) 
cube,  at  a  guess,  laid  with  their  smooth  cleavages  to  the  outside, 
fitted    like    mosaic — the    chinks    filled    with    smaller   stones. 


RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD  51 

altogether  peculiar  to  this  district  of  cleaving,  and  little  twisting, 
granite."  It  was  not  only  the  scenery  that  he  cared  for,  but 
the  evidences  of  happy  pastoral  life,  adapting  Nature's  gifts  to 
human  needs.  But  when,  off  the  kindly  granite  and  on  the 
cold,  grey  limestone  country,  we  passed  a  forlorn  homestead, 
ruinous  and  dirty,  he  shrank  back  in  the  carriage,  as  if  some 
one  had  thrown  a  stone  at  him. 

On  the  last  day  of  August  he  left  Avallon,  and  with  a 
short  stay  at  Semur  reached  his  old  quarters  at  the  Hotel  de  la 
Cloche,  Dijon.  He  was  already  contemplating  "  Prasterita," 
picking  up  the  memories  of  early  days,  and  planning  a  drive  by 
the  old  road  through  Jura  as  his  parents  used  to  do  it  in  the 
pre-railway  period.  He  began  by  showing  me  where  he  bit 
his  "  Seven  Lamps  "  plate  in  the  v/ash-hand  basin,  and  where 
Nurse  Anne  used  to  wake  him  of  mornings.  Meanwhile,  for 
the  book  to  be  called  '*  Our  Fathers  have  told  us,"  continuing 
"  The  Bible  of  Amiens,"  he  would  spend  two  days  with  the 
monks.  Citeaux,  the  home  of  the  Cistercians,  was  the  first 
day's  trip,  marred  by  the  heat  and  dust,  and  by  finding  all 
vestiges  of  the  monks  replaced  by  an  industrial  school  of  the 
ugliest,  which,  nevertheless,  he  inspected  with  nicely  restrained 
impatience.  A  moated  grange  on  the  wayside  homeward 
caught  his  eye,  and  as  he  sketched  it  he  tried  to  make  me 
believe  that  this  must  at  least  be  a  bit  of  the  monks'  work,  and 
the  journey  not  in  vain.  But  next  day  there  were  far  more 
interesting  experiences  in  a  visit  to  St.  Bernard's  birthplace. 
He  has  described  this  fully  in  his  lecture  called  "  Mending  the 
Sieve,"  in  the  volume  of  "  Verona,  &c.,"  and  I  need  only 
recall  the  surprise  of  a  bystander  not  wholly  unsympathetic, 
when  Ruskin  knelt  down  on  the  spot  of  the  great  saint's 
nativity,  and  stayed  long  in  prayer.  He  was  little  given  to 
outward  show  of  piety,  and  his  talk,  though  enthusiastic,  had 
been  no  preparation  for  this  burst  of  intense  feeling. 

Later  on  the  same  day  (Saturday,  September  2)  he  left 
Dijon  for  the  Jura  drive.     We  passed  Poligny,  a  usual  resting- 


52  RUSKIN    RELICS 

place  in  bygone  journeys,  by  train,  and  stayed  at  Champagnole, 
where  the  old  Hotel  de  la  Poste  used  to  be  one  of  his  "  homes." 
It  had  been  splendid  weather  for  the  last  few  days,  after  a  cold 
August  in  Central  France  ;  and  the  first  Jura  walk  was  across 
the  hill  to  the  gorge  of  the  Ain.  I  had  often  been  through  the 
Jura,  as  a  blind,  benighted  modern,  but  never  before  loitered 
from  slab  to  slab  of  its  fissured  limestone  summits,  looking  for 
the  foreground  loveliness  of  nestling  flowers  which  contrast  so 
delicately  with  the  quaint,  crannied  rock  ;  there  is  nothing 
which  gives  the  same  lyrical  feeling  except  some  of  Nature's 
gardens  in  wild  Icelandic  lava-fields.  How  eager  he  was,  and 
delighted  with  this  open  upland  !  You  know  there  is  only 
orje  place  where  he  speaks  of  "  liberty  "  as  a  good  thing,  and 
there  it  means  the  liberty  of  this  Jura  walk,  enjoyed  that 
afternoon. 

By-and-by  we  came  to  a  wood.  He  cast  about  a  little  for 
the  way  through  the  trees,  then  bade  me  notice  that  the  flowers 
of  spring  were  gone  :  "  You  ought  to  have  seen  the  wood- 
anemones,  and  oxalis,  and  violets  "  ;  and  then,  picking  his  steps 
to  find  the  exact  spot  by  a  twisted  larch-tree,  and  gripping  my 
arm  to  hold  me  back  on  the  brink  of  the  abyss,  "  That's  where 
the  hawk  sailed  ofi^  the  crag,  in  one  of  my  old  books  ;  do  you 
remember  .? " 

There  were  thunder  clouds  over  the  plain-country  that 
evening,  and  we  made  no  stop  to  sketch.  On  our  drive  next 
day  up  to  the  flat,  high  country  of  St.  Laurent,  with  its  pine 
forests  and  scattered  cottages,  and  down  into  Morez,  the 
weather  worsened.  Thence  the  road  climbs  by  the  side  of  the 
valley  to  the  highest  back  of  Jura  at  Les  Rousses  ;  the  road,  he 
says,  "  walked  most  of  the  way,  was  mere  enchantment."  At 
a  halt  I  sketched,  when  a  break  in  the  clouds  gave  sunbeams 
darting  into  the  valley  beneath,  and  wisps  of  white  wreathed  the 
steep  forests.  You  see  where  he  got  that  beautiful  cadence  to 
a  fine  passage,  after  comparing  the  Juraupland  with  a  Yorkshire 
moor,  and  contrasting  the  becks  of  our  fells  with  the  enchanted 


ON  RUSKINS;OLD  ROAD,   BETWEEN  MOREZ  AND  LES  ROUSSES 
September  1883 


RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD  55 

silence  of  open  Jura.  "  The  raincloud  clasps  her  cliffs,  and 
floats  along  her  fields  ;  it  passes,  and  in  an  hour  the  rocks  are 
dry,  and  only  beads  of  dew  left  in  the  Alchemilla  leaves — but 
of  rivulet  or  brook,  no  vestige,  yesterday  or  to-day  or  to-morrow. 
Through  unseen  fissures  and  filmy  crannies  the  waters  of  cliff 
and  plain  have  alike  vanished  ;  only  far  down  in  the  depth  of 
the  main  valley  glides  the  strong  river,  unconscious  of 
change." 

Up  at  Les  Rousses  he  pointed  out  the  fort,  then  in  building 
or  newly  built,  with  scorn — as  if  the  Swiss  on  the  one  side  or  the 
French  on  the  other  could  be  kept  in  their  bounds  by  stone 
walls,  when  real  war  comes  ;  and  then  crossing  the  frontier 
there  was  the  elation  of  getting  into  Switzerland.  "  Why  do 
you  like  it  better  than  France  ?  "  he  asked.  I  was  just  trying 
to  say  why,  that  it  is  a  free  country  and  some  more  innocent 
gush,  when  the  Swiss  Customs  officers  ran  up,  and  insisted  on 
overhauling  us,  for  they  don't  often  see  travellers  as  in  the  old 
days  at  Les  Rousses.  I  was  mightily  crestfallen  and  he  not  a 
little  delighted  at  this  exemplification  of  "  liberty  "  ;  but  he  did 
not  make  the  incident  a  horrid  example  in  '*  Praeterita." 

Here  we  diverged  a  little  from  the  old  road  of  his  youth,  by 
going  east  a  few  miles  to  St.  Cergues  instead  of  making  for  the 
Col  de  la  Faucille  at  once.  The  clean  inn  delighted  him  ;  pine 
boards  on  the  floor,  scrubbed  white,  and  no  needless  furniture. 
Here  he  said  we  should  stay  a  week  and  rest ;  he  had  much  to 
write — first  ideas  for  "  Praeterita,"  you  understand.  But  the  next 
days  were  wet,  and  he  sat  in  his  bedroom  writing  diligently  at 
first,  while  I  caught  some  bright  intervals  for  a  sketch,  though 
we  never  saw  the  line  of  the  Alps  quite  clear. 

Tn  the  lecture  on  *'  the  Storm  Cloud  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,"  one  of  his  least  convincing  though  most  sincerely 
meant  utterances,  there  are  references  to  the  strange  weather  of 
those  days.  All  the  way  up  from  Morez  he  wanted  me  to 
come  into  the  carriage  and  shut  the  window  because  of  a 
treacherous  east  wind,  and  in  my  sketch  you  can  see  a  certain 


56  RUSKIN    RELICS 

smoky,  not  only  thundery,  look  in  the  clouds.  At  St.  Cergues 
this  east  wind  haze  was  still  more  pronounced,  the  Lake  of 
Geneva  ruffled  and  white,  with  patches  of  shadow  from  small 
*'  sailor-boy  "  clouds,  while  the  whole  range  opposite  was  not 
exactly  shrouded  but  veiled  in  a  persistent  thickness  of  air. 
Above,  the  sky  was  bright,  with  blue  and  streaky  cirrus,  and 
between  the  showers  the  sun  glittered  on  the  trees.  That  fitful 
wind  with  the  brownish-grey  haze  he  called  the  plague-wind, 
and  in  all  his  lecture  there  is  no  very  definite  explanation  of  it, 
but  much  declamation  against  it  as  the  ruin  of  landscape,  and 
some  vague  hints  of  portent,  almost  as  if  he  had  been  a 
prophet  of  old  seeing  the  burden  of  modern  Babylon  in  the 
darkened  sun. 

It  is  smoke.  Any  one  who  haunts  our  Lake  district  hills 
knows  it  well.  On  coronation  night  I  saw  it  trailing  from 
Barrow  and  Carnforth  up  the  Lune  valley  as  far  as  Tebay, 
always  low  and  level,  leaving  the  upper  hills  clear,  perfectly 
continuous  and  distinct  from  the  mist  of  water.  This  winter, 
from  the  top  of  Wetherlam  on  a  brilliant  frosty  day,  I  saw  it 
gradually  invade  the  Lake  district  from  the  south-east  ;  the 
horizontal,  clean-cut,  upper  surface  at  about  200vO  feet  ;  the 
body  of  it  dun  and  semi-transparent  ;  its  thick  veil  fouling  the 
little  cotton-woolly  clouds  that  nestled  in  the  coves  of  the 
Kirkstone  group,  quite  separate  from  the  smoke-pall  ;  and  by 
sunset  it  had  reached  to  Dungeon  Gill,  leaving  the  Bow  Fell 
valleys  clear.  Coming  down  by  moonlight  I  found  the  dales 
in  a  dry,  cold  fog,  and  heard  that  there  had  been  no  sunshine 
at  Coniston  that  afternoon.  This  is  Ruskin's  plague-cloud, 
and  the  real  enemy  of  the  weather  not  only  in  England  but  in 
the  Alps.  You  will  see  it,  according  to  the  wind,  on  either 
side  of  Zurich  most  notably,  and  the  distance  this  blight  will 
travel  is  more  than  the  casual  reader  might  believe.  A  strong 
wind  carries  it  away,  but  only  to  deposit  it  somewhere  else, 
cutting  off  the  sun's  rays,  and  breeding  rain  and  storm.  This 
was  not  understood  twenty  years  ago,  but  Ruskin's  observations 


RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD  59 

of  the  weather  were  perfectly  accurate   and  his   regrets   at  the 
changed  aspect  of  Alpine  landscape  were  only  too  justifiable. 

On  Thursday,  September  7,  he  had  tired  of  dull  weather  at 
St.  Cergues,  and  written  up  his  notes  for  "  Praeterita "  ;  he 
proposed  to  climb  the  Dole  and  get  onward  to  Geneva.  It  is  a 
very  easy  walk  of  about  a  couple  of  hours  up  the  gently  sloping 
backs  of  the  Helvellyn-like  Jura  range  ;  and  from  its  top  one 
should  get  a  grand  view  of  the  lake  and  the  Alps  to  Mont 
Blanc.  He  walked  up  as  briskly  as  ever  ;  there  was  a  cold  wind 
but  sun  overhead,  though  the  mountains  to  the  south  and  east 
were  still  in  the  "  plague-cloud."  There  was  no  sketching  to 
be  done,  and  we  followed  the  ridge  down  to  the  Col  de  la 
Faucille.  If  you  look  at  his  map  of  the  Jura,  facsimiled  at 
page  109  of  this  volume,  the  Col  is  where  the  road  suddenly 
turns  round  into  zigzags  after  going  straight  south-west  behind 
the  Dole  ;  and  you  remember  how  he  names  the  whole  chapter 
from  this  one  spot,  as  a  chief  landmark  in  his  memories,  for 
there  he  always  used  to  get  his  first  full  view  of  the  "  Mount 
Beloved."  Few  travellers  know  it,  he  says  ;  but  it  is  far  from 
unknown  to  all  who  have  lived  in  la  Suisse  Romande.  There, 
they  take  school-children  up  mountains.  Far  better  than 
Helvellyn  is  known  to  the  English  school  child,  the  "  dear 
Dole  "  is  known  to  every  youngster  who  has  learnt  to  sing  (to 
the  tune  of  *'  Life  let  us  cherish  ")  the  song  of 

La  Suisse  est  belle, 
Oh  qu'il  la  faut  cherir  ! 

We  were  not  quite  without  our  view.  For  a  moment,  too 
short  for  a  sketch,  Mont  Blanc  loomed  through  the  dull  haze, 
red  in  the  sunset,  brick  red,  not  Alpine  rose  ;  and  then  all  was 
grey.  We  found  our  carriage  and  drove  down.  I  was  waked 
in  the  darkness  by  Ruskin  saying,  "  This  is  where  Voltaire 
lived."     "Oh,  indeed  !"  said  I. 

Next  morning,  from  his  old  front  rooms  at  the  Hotel  des 
Bergues,  where  he  had  already  begun  a  sketch  of  the  houses 


6o  RUSKIN    RELICS 

opposite,  merely  for  love  of  them,  we  went  out  in  the  heat  to 
see  the  Rhone.  All  the  haze  had  gone,  at  least  from  the 
nearer  view,  and  he  seemed  never  tired  of  looking  at  the  water 
from  the  footbridge  and  wherever  it  was  visible.  I  wondered 
why  he  would  not  come  on  ;  but  now  I  know.  **  Fifteen  feet 
thick — of  not  flowing  but  flying  water  " — I  will  not  quote  the 
wonderful  pages  which  every  lover  of  Ruskin,  of  landscape, 
and  of  English  undefiled,  must  know — the  "  one  mighty  wave 
that  was  always  itself,  and  every  fluted  swirl  of  it  constant  as 
the  wreathing  of  a  shell  "  ;  and  then  the  bit  about  its  blue,  and 
"  the  innocent  way  "  of  it,  and  its  dancing  and  rippling  and 
glittering,  *'  and  the  dear  old  decrepit  town  as  safe  in  the 
embracing  sweep  of  it  as  if  it  were  set  in  a  brooch  of  sapphire  '* 
— that  was  what  he  was  thinking,  and  storing  up  in  his  mind 
the  famous  description  which  showed  that  even  so  late,  in 
shattered  health  and,  as  people  said,  impaired  powers,  he  could 
talk  and  write  as  brilliantly  as  ever. 

That  afternoon  in  the  glaring  sunshine  we  drove  out  ot 
Geneva  through  suburban  villadom — he  much  amused  at  the 
modern  fashion  of  house-names,  "  Mon  Repos,"  "  Chez  Nous," 
and  so  forth — towards  Monnetier.  He  was  at  the  moment 
healthily  interested  in  Alpine  structure,  the  geology  of  scenery, 
and  could  forget  "  St.  George  "  in  his  eagerness  to  expound  his 
views  on  the  cleavage  of  the  Saleve.  I  made  a  slight  note  of 
the  lines,  the  cathedral-like  buttresses  which  flank  the  level- 
bedded  masonry  of  the  great  mountain-wall  with  masses  of  a 
difi^erent  rock,  vertically  cloven  ;  and  the  gorge  of  Monnetier 
which  cuts  the  range  across  with  an  unexpected  breach  ;  and 
we  went  over  his  old  debate  with  the  Genevese  geologists. 
Then  we  climbed  the  Echelle,  and  from  the  top  found  the 
Annecy  Alps  fairly  clear,  but  I  think  the  same  heaviness  over 
the  greater  snow-peaks.  At  last  we  reached  Mornex,  his  old 
home  in  the  'sixties,  when  he  was  writing  "  Munera  Pulveris  '* 
and  first  seriously  grappling  with  the  social  problems  which  after- 
wards became  his  chief  theme  in  so  many  lectures  and  books. 


RUSKIN'S    OLD    ROAD 


6i 


A  letter  he  wrote  that  evening,  to  describe  the  visit,  has 
recently  been  published  ;  hov^^  he  found  his  old  house  a 
restaurant,  v/ith  people  drinking  on  the  terrace.  He  v^^as, 
though  he  did  not  say  so,  rather  cast  dovi^n  by  the  change — he 
who  always  deplored  changes  ;  but  brightened  when  the  land- 
lord guessed  who  he  must  be,  and  quite  cheered  up — with  that 
last  infirmity  of  noble  minds — on  hearing  that  the  English 
sometimes  came  to  see  Ruskin's  house.     Indeed,  it  was  more 


*^   JW^; 


"^•ciJu 


THE   GORGE  OF  MONNETIER  AND  THE   BUTTRESSES 
OF  THE  SALEVE 


his  home  than  many  a  house  in  England  where  he  spent  longer 
years,  for  it  was  of  choice,  not  of  necessity,  that  he  lived  there, 
and  would  have  continued  there  to  his  own  great  advantage  but 
for  his  father's  death,  which  recalled  him  to  the  care  of  his 
widowed  mother. 

One  phrase  in  that  letter  as  now  printed  seems  to  have 
pained  and  alarmed  some  of  his  friends  ;  but  surely  without 
cause.  He  says  to  account  for  beginning  his  letter  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  paper — as  most  people  seem  to  do  nowadays 
— that  he  had  taken  a  glass  too  much  Burgundy.  The  son  of 
the  sherry-merchant,  with  old-fashioned  notions  on  the  fitness 
of  things,  always  took  a  glass  or  two  of  wine  at  dinner  ;  one  of 
his  sayings  was,  **  A  glass  of  good  wine  never  hurt  anybody." 
But  I  am  sure  all  his  personal  friends  will  bear  me  out  that  it 
never  went  beyond  the  glass  or  two.     He  was  no  drinker,  and 


62  RUSKIN    RELICS 

his  very  strong  anti-teetotal  attitude  was  simply  the  expression 
of  his  own  habitual  and  easy  temperance.  That  evening's 
dinner  I  remember  well.  After  our  walk  from  Veyrier  to  Pont 
d'Etrembieres,  and  more  sauntering  by  the  Rhone  in  a  beautiful 
red  sunset,  we  came  in  late.  At  table  we  had  some  debate 
about  the  pictures  on  the  walls  of  the  hotel  sitting-room,  and 
he  would  not  have  it  that  Madame  Vigee  Lebrun's  portrait  of 
herself  and  her  daughter  was  charming.  "  No  decent  woman," 
he  said,  "  would  paint  herself  with  bare  arms,  like  that  !  " — 
which  was  quite  his  usual  way  of  thinking  about  a  much- 
discussed  question  of  art.  And  then  we  settled  to  a  little 
after-dinner  writing,  and  you  will  not  be  surprised  if  we  both 
nodded  over  our  pens  after  that  long  hot  day — and^  of  course, 
the  Burgundy. 


RUSKIN'S    ''CASHBOOK" 


RUSKIN'S    "CASHBOOK" 


So  it  is  lettered  on  the  back  ;  but  his  titles,  as  every  one 
knows,  are  far-fetched.  There  are  some  accounts  in  this 
volume,  but  most  of  it  is  filled  with  a  diary  of  the  tour  abroad 
in  1882,  and  subsequent  entries,  very  neatly  written  ;  the  red 
lines  for  £  s.  d.  serving  to  keep  the  manuscript  within  mar- 
gins, just  like  print. 

Ruskin's  journals,  I  understand,  are  not  to  be  published. 
The  bulk  of  their  contents — landscape  descriptions  and  various 
notes  on  natural  history,  architecture,  and  many  different  sub- 
jects— have  been  worked  into  his  books.  The  remainder 
consists  of  daily  jottings  about  the  weather,  always  important 
to  one  whose  chief  pleasure  was  in  scenery,  with  fragmentary 
hints  of  his  occupations  or  travels,  and  still  more  fragmentary 
mention  of  persons.  They  are  not  exactly  memoranda  ;  still 
less  the  memoirs  of  a  literary  man,  written  with  one  eye  on 
the  public.  They  are  mere  soliloquies  of  the  moment,  gossip 
of  himself  to  himself  before  breakfast. 

While  he  lived,  though  I  had  often  occasion  to  refer  to 
these  journals,  I  never  felt  quite  at  liberty  to  open  this  *'  Cash- 
book,  "with  its  private  notes  on  a  period  when  I  was  practically 
alone  with  him  ;  his  valet,  Baxter,  was  also  of  the  party,  but 
at  meals  and  at  work,  on  walks  and  drives,  he  had  usually  to 
put  up  with  my  company.  He  was  exceedingly  and  unfailingly 
kind,  but  exacting  ;  it  would  have  needed  great  self-confidence 


66  RUSKIN    RELICS 

to  be  sure  of  his  good  opinion.  But  now  that  these  papers 
require  it,  to  paint  his  portrait  as  he  was  at  that  time,  I  have 
taken  advantage  of  Mrs.  Severn's  kind  leave  ;  and  in  con- 
tinuing the  story  of  the  tour  I  can  sometimes  add  to  my 
reminiscences  Ruskin's  impressions  on  the  spot  as  recorded  by 
himself. 

From  Geneva  we  went  up  to  Sallenches  (September  9, 
1882),  hoping  to  see  the  Alps,  in  spite  of  the  smoke-cloud. 
He  was  at  the  moment  thinking  and  talking  chiefly  of  "artistic 
geology,"  if  one  may  coin  a  parallel  to  "  artistic  anatomy  " — 
the  old  subject  of  his  "  Modern  Painters,"  vol.  iv.  In  the 
chapter  on  the  Old  Road  I  said  healthily  interested,  for  any 
work  on  Nature  was  good  for  him  personally,  and  this  tour 
was  for  the  sake  of  health  after  long  and  recurrent  attacks  of 
illness. 

In  those  days,  and  to  the  few  who  cared  much  more  for 
himself  than  his  mission,  St.  George  and  St.  Benedict  were  the 
enemies  ;  his  Guild  and  all  the  worries  connected  with  it,  and 
his  ethico-socio-political  meditations,  mixed  with  much  wan- 
dering into  Greek  and  mediaeval  mythology,  always  meant 
mischief  to  him.  So  after  the  visit  to  Citeaux  and  the  birth- 
place of  St.  Bernard,  it  was  good  to  see  him  eager  for  the 
mountains,  and  looking  out  for  well-known  twists  in  the  lime- 
stone strata,  and  clefts  and  cascades,  points  of  view  and  distant 
glimpses,  all  the  way  up  the  valley.  If  only  the  smoke-cloud 
would  lift,  and  a  spell  of  fair  weather  would  tempt  him  to 
linger  among  the  Alps,  hammering  rocks  and  sketching 
cottages,  the  object  of  the  journey  would  be  gained. 

There  was  a  horrid  new  road  being  made  high  up  on  the 
flank  of  his  favourite  mountain,  the  Brezon,  whose  top  he  had 
wanted  to  possess.  At  Cluses,  what  were  those  sticks  in  the 
meadow  ?  I  asked  ;  and  learnt  that  they  marked  out  the  long- 
intended  railway.  A  railway  in  the  valley  of  the  Arve  !  It 
meant  to  him  simply  the  end  of  all  that  made  the  glory  and 
grandeur  of  this  classic  ground.     But  he  was  partly  comforted 


orTHr   '^ 
VNIVER8/Ty 


RUSKIN'S    "CASHBOOK"  69 

by  the  thought  that  after  all  it  might  not  be,  or,  at  least,  not  in 
his  time.  Maglans  and  the  Nant  d'Arpenaz  were  still  as 
Turner  painted  them  ;  and  though  his  old  familiar  resting- 
place  at  St.  Martin  was  no  longer  open  as  an  inn,  we  could  stay 
across  the  valley  at  Sallenches,  within  easy  walks  of  many 
favourite  haunts. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  which  he  usually  spent  more 
quietly  than  other  days.  We  took  the  walk  his  father  and  he 
used  to  take  on  many  Sundays  passed  in  that  neighbourhood, 
up  a  glen  to  the  south  of  the  village.  In  his  diary  that  day 
he  began  an  analysis  of  the  Psalms — he  had  been  taking  them 
for  his  morning  Bible-readings ;  and  I  find  that  at  St.  Cergues, 
on  the  5  th,  he  had  thankfully  noted  the  arrival  of  a  telegram 
with  good  news  from  home,  just  as  he  was  reading  me  the 
104th  Psalm.  He  did  not  hold  "family  prayers"  as  a  habit, 
but  sometimes  when  he  was  delighted  with  a  nice  chapter  he 
couldn't  keep  it  to  himself. 

Early  next  morning  Mont  Blanc  was  clear,  though  soon 
clouded  (the  diary  is  quoted  in  the  "  Storm-cloud  "  lecture)  ; 
and  then,  in  pursuance  of  the  geology  study  he  had  begun 
he  set  to  work  "  to  do  a  little  Deucalion,"  but  opened  Job 
instead,  at  xi.  16,  and  read  on  "with  comfort"  the  "glorious 
natural  history"  of  the  old  book.  Next  day  he  noted  the 
second  speech  of  Zophar  as  "  the  leading  piece  of  political 
economy  "  which  he  ought  to  have  quoted  in  "  Fors." 

In  spite  of  the  dull  weather  we  had  a  good  ramble  up  the 
valley  he  called  "  Norton's  Glen,"  from  the  remembrance  of 
walks  there  with  Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton  ;  and  though 
sketching  was  little  use,  he  was  happy  in  the  contemplation  of 
boulders.  It  was  in  coming  down  from  that  walk  (if  I 
remember  right  ;  the  diary  does  not  mention  it)  that  I  got 
such  a  scolding  for  proposing  to  extract  a  fossil  from  a  stone 
in  a  vineyard  terrace-wall  :  "  You  bad  boy  !  Have  you  no 
respect  for  property  ? "  or  words  to  that  effect ;  and  I  had  to 
leave  the  specimen  in  situ.     But  next  day  I  "  scored  "  with  a 


JO  RUSKIN    RELICS 

careful  drawing  of  the  Nant  d'Arpenaz,  disentangling  the 
contorted  beds  of  limestone  ;  and  in  the  diary  is  a  copy  from 
my  sketch,  a  subject,  he  said,  he  had  often  tried  in  vain.  On 
the  way  back  to  Sallenches  we  looked  at  the  old  Hotel  du 
Mont  Blanc  at  St.  Martin,  which  gives  a  title  to  one  of  the 
chapters  of  "  Prasterita,"  and  need  not  be  described  here  ;  but 
he  was  so  taken  with  it  and  its  memories  that  he  asked  whether 
it  was  for  sale,  and  really  formed  a  plan  of  buying  it,  and 
coming  to  live  there.  The  diary  gives  various  reasons,  ending 
with  one  of  the  oddest ;  I  had  made  some  verses  about  the 
place,  rather  on  the  lines  his  talk  had  suggested,  but  ending 
with  more  optimism,  and  these,  too,  he  notes,  contributed  to 
the  "  leadings "  which  pointed  him  to  a  new  home  in  Savoy. 
A  little  later  there  came  a  letter  addressed  to  "  MM.  Ruskin 
et  Collingwood  " — "  Quite  like  a  firm,"  he  said  ;  "  I  wonder 
what  they  think  we're  travelling  in  ;  but  I  hope  we'll  always 
be  partners  " — the  terms  of  the  offer  I  forget,  but  they  did  not 
seem  practicable,  or  Coniston  might  have  known  him  no  more. 
At  least,  it  was  possible,  and  it  would  have  been  good  in 
many  ways  for  him  ;  but  there  were  ties  to  think  of.  Next 
day,  after  rain  in  the  valley  and  snow  on  the  Varens,  and 
swallows  gathering  in  crowds  along  the  eaves  and  cornices  of 
the  square,  there  was  a  grand  clearance  at  sunset,  and  he  wrote 
to  Miss  Beever  the  note  printed  in  "  Hortus  Inclusus  "  about 
seeing  Mont  Blanc — "  a  sight  which  always  redeems  me  to  what 
I  am  capable  of  at  my  poor  little  best,  and  to  what  loves  and 
memories  are  most  precious  to  me.  So  'I  write  to  you,  one  of 
the  few  true  loves  left.  The  snow  has  fallen  fresh  on  the  hills, 
and  it  makes  me  feel  that  I  must  soon  be  seeking  shelter  at 
Brantwood  and  the  Thwaite."  And  yet  he  was  greatly  tempted 
to  stay.  On  the  splendid  morning  which  followed  he  wrote  in 
his  journal,  "  Perfect  light  on  the  Dorons,  and  the  Varens  a 
miracle  of  aerial  majesty.  I — happy  in  a  more  solemn  way 
than  of  old.  Read  a  bit  of  Ezra  and  referred  to  Haggai  ii.  9 
— '  In  this  place  will  I  give  peace. 


VN/VERSITY 


RUSKIN'S   "CASHBOOK"  73 

Letters,  however,  were  expected  at  Geneva,  and  with  many 
plans  for  SIxt  and  Chamouni  he  turned  his  back  on  Sallenches 
for  the  time  and  had  a  "  marvellous  drive  through  the  valley  of 

Cluse ;  C sectionising  (making  notes  of  limestone  strata) 

all  the  way.  Divine  walk  to  old  spring  under  Brezon."  Then 
he  reproves  himself  for  his  annoyance  at  the  "  plague-wind  " 
and  tiresome  letters  at  Geneva,  "  for  I  shall  try  to  remember 
the  Aiguille  de  Bionassay  of  the  13th  at  evening  and  the  Nant 
d'Arpenaz  looked  back  at  yesterday  morning — with  my 
morning  walk  once  more  among  the  dew  above  Sallenches — 
for  ever  and  a  day." 

Without  keeping  constantly  before  one's  mind  his  passionate 
love  of  scenery  it  is  impossible  to  put  a  right  estimate  on  much 
that  he  has  written.  There  are  comparatively  few  people 
whose  chief  pleasure  is  in  taking  a  walk  and  looking  at  the 
country,  without  any  notion  of  sport  or  games  to  eke  out  the 
interest.  It  is  true  that  he  sketched  and  wrote,  but  his 
pleasure  was  in  seeing.  It  was  his  admiration  of  Nature  that 
had  brought  him  to  admire  Art  in  his  youth,  and  I  think  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  Art  was  always  a  secondary  thing  to 
him  personally.  The  desire  to  see  Art  healthily  and  nobly 
practised  made  him  study  the  life  of  the  craftsman  and  the 
craftsman's  surroundings,  spiritual  and  material.  The  material 
needs  of  Victorian  society  pressed  upon  him  "  Unto  this  Last  " 
and  "  St.  George  "  ;  the  spiritual  needs  drove  him  back  upon 
ancient  religious  ideals,  "  The  Queen  of  the  Air  "  and  "  St. 
Benedict."  All  these  various  strands  of  thought  were  closely 
woven  together  in  his  life,  but  from  the  beginning  to  the  end 
the  love  for  natural  scenery  was  the  core  of  the  cable.  You 
gather  already  from  this  "  Cashbook  "  that  a  few  days  among 
the  Alps  had  quite  restored  him  to  physical  strength,  and  given 
him  hopes  and  happiness. 

On  Saturday,  September  16,  we  left  Geneva  for  Annecy, 
intending  more  limestone  geology,  and  thenceforward  had  many 
days'  driving  with  the   "  Mephistopheles  coachman  and  the 


74  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Black  Dog,"  as  he  put  it  at  first.  Later  on  he  became  enthu- 
siastic over  the  same  coachman  for  his  capital  driving  and  care 
of  his  horses,  and  because  of  the  story  of  the  dog  Tom, 
whom,  the  man  said,  he  had  rescued  from  death  at  the  hands 
of  an  American  owner  at  Nice.  Tom,  with  his  spiked  fur 
collar,  was  usually  absent  at  the  start.  The  driver  said  he  was 
shut  up  so  that  he  might  not  annoy  Messieurs  ;  but  he  always 
appeared,  was  scolded,  and  forgiven,  and  petted  for  the  rest 
of  the  way.  Affection  for  animals  appealed  to  Ruskin,  and  in 
France  one  sees  much  of  it.  On  one  of  these  drives  we 
stopped  for  lunch  out  of  doors  before  a  wayside  inn.  To  this 
lunch  there  came  a  little  dog,  two  cats,  and  a  pet  sheep,  and 
shared  our  wine,  bread,  and  Savoy  sponge-cakes.  The  sheep 
at  last  got  to  putting  its  feet  on  the  table,  and  the  landlady 
rushed  out  and  carried  him  off  in  her  arms  into  the  house  ;  but 
Ruskin,  I  think,  would  quite  as  soon  have  let  the  creature 
stay.  At  Annecy  the  landlord  told  me  stories  of  his  big  St. 
Bernard  dog,  how  he  was  defended  from  other  dogs  by  the  cat, 
and  how  sometimes  they  quarrelled,  and  then  the  dog  had  to  go 
and  sit  on  the  mat  out  of  doors  until  the  cat  had  forgiven  him  ; 
how  the  cat  also  was  in  the  habit  of  catching  swallows  on  the 
wing,  and  bringing  them  in  to  show — as,  certainly,  cats  do 
with  the  mice  they  catch — and  then  she  would  let  them  go 
uninjured.  This  delighted  Ruskin  at  dinner,  and  may  have 
suggested  the  dream  which  I  see  he  records  in  his  "  Cashbook  " 
— "  dreamt  of  a  fine  old  lion  who  was  quite  good  if  he  wasn't 
kept  prisoner  ;  but  when  I  had  got  him  out,  I  didn't  know 
what  to  do  with  him."  The  parting  with  Tom  and  his  master 
I  have  mentioned  elsewhere — how  he  gave  the  man  twenty 
francs  for  a  honne  main  and  two  francs  over  for  a  honne  patte^  he 
said,  to  the  dog  ! 

At  Annecy,  in  the  pleasant  Hotel  Verdun,  he  confessed 
himself  already  stronger,  and  fit  for  anything  but  proofs  and 
business  letters  ;  but  the  "  plague-cloud  "  still  hung  over  the 
view.     He  noted  that  the  smoke  from  the  factory  chimneys 


>     2 


«     ^ 


RUSKIN'S    "CASHBOOK"  -jj 

could  not  be  told  from  the  clouds  except  by  its  density,  and 
mixed  with  the  mist  so  as  to  throw  a  pall  over  the  lake 
from  the  town  to  the  Tournette — the  great  mountain  of  the 
neighbourhood  above  Talloires.  But  still  he  did  not  see  that 
the  black,  ragged,  dirty  weather  was  caused  by  the  smoke, 
though  he  compared  it  with  a  London  November.  The  nearer 
scenery  was  visible  and  beautiful.  The  blue  lake,  always  blue, 
with  a  light  of  its  own,  and  Talloires,  with  pleasant  associations 
and  unspoiled  surroundingsof  most  romantic  character,  charmed 
him  as  of  old.  We  drove  there  the  first  Sunday  ;  he  took  me 
up  to  Eugene  Sue's  house  and  then  on  to  the  cascade,  two  and 
a  half  hours'  walk,  and  then  sauntered  among  the  vineyards 
and  along  the  bay,  under  the  plane-tree  avenues,  driving  home 
in  an  open  carriage,  and  said  he  had  not  spent  such  an  idle  day 
for  ten  years.  Next  day  we  "  did  "  the  Gorge  of  the  Fier,  and 
discussed  the  possible  causes  of  this  great  ravine,  through  which 
the  river  plunges  so  unexpectedly  and,  one  would  think,  unneces- 
sarily. Then  to  Talloires  again,  and  planned  return  for  work. 
Meanwhile  he  had  made  appointments  in  Italy.  He  talked 
of  a  rush  to  Rome  and  hasty  visits  to  Lucca  and  Florence, 
coming  back  soon  to  the  Alps.  But  this  turned  out  to  be  a 
longer  journey  than  he  had  meant.  His  seal-motto  was 
"  To-day,"  and  the  business  of  the  moment  was  always  the 
most  important  with  him  ;  and  so  the  Italian  tour  was  pro- 
longed to  nearly  two  months.  It  ended  in  his  catching  a 
thorough  cold  at  Pisa  through  sketching  in  November  winds, 
and  in  his  longing  for  the  clear  air  of  the  Alps  again,  before 
returning  to  London  for  the  lecture  he  had  promised  to  give  in 
December.  This  was  the  lecture  announced  as  "  Crystallo- 
graphy," but  delivered  as  "  Cistercian  Architecture,"  about 
which  he  said,  joking  at  his  own  expense,  that  it  would  pro- 
bably have  come  to  much  the  same  thing  whatever  the  title 
had  been.  I  did  not  quite  see  why  he  should  lecture  on  either  ; 
but  he  declared  himself  quite  well,  and  as  we  had  dropped 
crystallography — the     chief    subject     before     the     tour — for 


78  RUSKIN    RELICS 

cathedrals  and  abbeys  in  Italy,  he  shut  himself  up  at  Pisa,  cold 
and  all,  to  write  his  lecture.  Then  having,  as  he  thought, 
mastered  it,  we  ran  north.  He  wanted  to  stay  at  St.  Michel, 
a  favourite  place  on  the  Mont  Cenis  line,  but  high,  and  likely 
to  be  bleak  in  November  for  a  man  with  a  bad  cold,  I  thought 
— very  possibly  mistaken.  I  took  tickets  for  Aix-les-Bains, 
and  we  had  our  only  quarrel  on  that  trip.  I  felt  particularly 
guilty  as  he  recounted  to  me,  in  an  injured  tone,  the  horrors 
of  Aix,  the  one  place  he  abominated,  and  the  beauties  of  St. 
Michel,  while  the  train  climbed  the  Dora  valley  to  Bardonecchia 
in  fairly  fine  weather. 

On  the  French  side  it  was  deep  snow  and  bitter  weather 
as  we  ran  down  to  Aix.  The  next  day  was  delightful,  but  I 
always  shirked  the  recollection  of  my  misdemeanour  until  I 
found  how  his  diary-entries  ignored  it.  "  The  cold's  quite 
gone  !  Friday  in  glowing  sunshine,  Pisa  to  Turin  ;  Saturday 
in  frightful  damp  and  cold,  Turin  to  Aix  ;  but  quite  easy  days 
both.  Sun  coming  out  now.  Dent  de  Bourget  over  mist  and 
low  cloud,  very  lovely,  as  I  dressed." 

The  next  entry  I  copy  because  it  shows  that  he  was  not  as 
entirely  hostile  to  railways  as  the  casual  reader  imagines. 
Writing  of  the  ride  to  Annecy  he  says  in  the  "  Cashbook  "  : 
"  An  entirely  divine  rdilw^y-coupe  drive  from  Aix  by  the  river 
gorges  ;  one  enchantment  of  golden  trees  and  ruby  hills."  But 
it  was  a  splendid  day.  In  clumsier  phrasing  I  wrote  home  of 
"  all  the  prettiest  autumn  colours  that  ever  were  made  out  of 
remnants  of  old  rainbows  patched  up  into  a  gala  dress  for  the 
world." 

At  Annecy  we  delayed  only  long  enough  for  me  to  get 
rooms  in  the  Hotel  de  lAbbaye  at  Talloires,  where  we  stayed 
from  the  14th  to  the  22nd  in  stormy,  snowy  weather.  He 
was  quite  well  at  first,  and  proud  of  leading  the  way  down  the 
steep  mountain-tracks — well  known  to  him — in  the  dark  after 
long  walks  ;  but  some  days  we  could  not  get  out  at  all.  I  sat 
writing  by  the  log  fire  in  the  dining-room  ;   he  preferring  his 


RUSKIN'S    "CASHBOOK"  8i 

bedroom,  with  what  glimpses  could  be  got  of  the  lake  through 
snowstorms ;  and  in  the  night  the  wind  howled  through 
deserted  corridors — for  the  place  was  once  a  real  monastery — 
until  it  became  quite  uncanny.  His  bad  dreams  had  gone,  but 
he  could  not  get  exercise  enough  to  sleep  well.  The  lecture 
was  variously  rewritten,  monks  and  myths  chasing  one  another 
through  his  brain,  instead  of  the  crystal-cleavages  and  rock- 
forms  he  had  set  out  to  study.  St.  Benedict  had  been  too 
strong  for  us,  and  the  ghost  of  St.  Bernard  of  Talloires  (or  of 
Menthon,  not  the  St.  Bernard  of  his  former  pilgrimage,  but  a 
tenth-century  hermit,  whose  cave  is  still  shown)  who  saw  "  not 
the  Lake  of  Annecy,  but  the  dead  between  Martigny  and 
Aosta,"  and  founded  the  hospice  that  bears  his  name — as 
Ruskin  would  fain  have  founded,  in  another  way,  a  refuge  for 
those  who  fall  in  the  nineteenth-century  struggle  for  life  ;  but 
fell  himself  in  attempting  it. 

I  did  not  know  at  the  time  that  he  was  meditating  a  return 
to  his  Professorship  at  Oxford.  He  kept  that  a  secret,  and  sent 
me  off  on  a  special  mission  to  draw  Alps  in  snow.  Rejoining 
him  at  Geneva  I  found  him  in  the  depths  of  misery,  with  the 
weather  bad  and  his  work  going  too  slowly  forward,  and  the 
glamour  all  gone  out  of  his  '*  mother  town  "  of  Geneva,  "  or 
what  was  once  Geneva,"  he  said,  ruined  by  touristry  and  luxury 
into  a  mere  suburb  of  Paris,  which  was  a  suburb  of  hell.  So 
through  cold  and  flooded  France  he  took  his  way  homeward. 
At  Paris,  Hotel  Meurice  was  no  longer  what  it  had  been  ;  the 
pneumatic  clock  in  his  room,  with  its  minute-gun  of  a  tick  and 
a  jerk,  got  on  his  nerves,  and  he  demanded  of  the  bewildered 
waiter  that  it  should  be  stopped.  The  Tuileries  were  in  ruins, 
placarded  for  sale  as  building  material.  In  the  bookshops  he 
could  not  buy  the  books  he  sought,  but,  as  it  seemed,  only 
photographs  of  actresses.  The  Louvre,  even,  in  such  sur- 
roundings gave  him  only  suggestions  of  irritation.  And  it 
was  a  thankful  secretary  who  saw  him  safely  over  the  Channel 
and  back  to  Heme  Hill  on  the  first  Saturday  in  December. 

F 


82  RUSKIN    RELICS 

But  the  journey  was  not  a  failure.  At  Lucca  he  made 
some  of  his  best  drawings,  and  the  descriptive  passages  in 
"  Praeterita  "  and  elsewhere,  written  on  that  tour,  or  from 
notes  then  made,  are  among  his  finest ;  and  he  was  able  to 
write  in  his  "  Cashbook  "  on  December  3  :  *'  Slept  well,  and 
hope  to  be  fit  for  lecture  to-morrow  ;  very  happy  in  showing 
our  drawings  and  complete  sense  of  rest  after  three  months' 
tossing."  Early  in  the  next  year  he  found  himself  able  to  take 
up  his  old  work  at  Oxford,  and  for  awhile — but  only  for  awhile 
— it  seemed  that  the  storm-cloud  of  his  life  had  cleared  away. 


VI 


RUSKIN'S    ILARIA 


VI 
RUSKIN'S    ILARIA 


On  Friday,  September  22,  1882,  we  were  at  Turin.  "  Filthy 
city,"  Ruskin  wrote  in  his  diary.  **  One  pestilence  now  of 
noise  and  smoke  ;  and  1  got  fearfully  sad  and  discouraged,  not 
only  by  this,  but  by  not  caring  the  least  any  more  for  my  old 
pets  of  pictures,  and  not  being  able  to  see  the  minerals  in  close, 
dark  rooms."  But  he  adds,  "  Note  the  unique  white 
amianth,"  and  so  forth,  and  he  seemed  to  know  the  collection 
by  heart.  As  to  the  pictures,  the  way  he  pointed  out  how 
Vandyck  enjoyed  the  laying  on  of  his  colour,  in  a  portrait  of 
King  Charles,  gloating  over  the  horse's  mane  and  the  delicate 
dexterity  of  the  armour,  makes  me  hope  that  even  the  steam 
tramways  of  Turin  had  not  utterly  darkened  his  life. 

Once  out  of  the  town  his  spirits  rose.  "  Alps  clear,  within 
twenty  or  thirty  miles  of  Monte  Viso  ;  then  through  sandhills 
of  Bra  to  Montenotte,  down  among  the  strange  mounds  and 
dells  of  the  Apennine  gneiss,  to  Savona  walled  down  to  the  sea, 
beside  a  dismantled  fortress  which  is  certainly  one  of  Turner's 
late  subjects.  Then  among  the  olives  and  palms,  and  by  the 
green  serpentines,  under  darkening  clouds,  with  constant 
boom  and  sigh  of  waves,  to  Cogoleto."  But  at  Genoa  the 
Sunday  was  '*  a  day  of  disgust  at  all  things.  Proud  palaces, 
foolish  little  St.  Georges  over  their  doors.  Duomo  in  my  pet 
style,  not  doing  it  credit  ;  and  a  long  climb  over  rocks,  and 
road  of  black  limestone  veined  with  white,  commanding  all  the 


86  RUSKIN    RELICS 

heaps,  rather  than  hills,  of  the  mouldering  earth,  looking 
almost  barren  in  its  dull  grass,  on  which  the  suburbs  of  Genoa, 
hamlet  and  villa,  are  scattered  far  and  wide  ;  the  vast  new 
cemetery,  their  principal  object  of  view  and  glorification,  seen 
by  the  winding  of  the  waterless  river-bed." 

To  most  of  us  there  is  nothing  more  exhilarating  than  the 
platform-shout  when  the  south  express  starts — '*  Parrr — tenza 
per  Spezia  —  Pisa  —  I.ivorno  —  Firenze  —  Civitavecchia  — 
Roooma  !  "  and  the  clattering  dash  through  tunnel  after 
tunnel,  among  the  rocks  and  green  breakers  of  that  wonderful 
coast.  But  it  only  worried  and  unnerved  him.  It  was  not 
his  old  road. 

It  was  dull  weather  at  Pisa  after  the  first  dewy  morning  for 
the  Campo  Santo  ;  and  there  were  "  entirely  diabolical "  trams 
and  chimneys  in  the  town  since  his  last  visit.  The  streets, 
every  reach  of  them  loved  of  old  for  some  jewel  of  mellowed 
architecture,  were  changing  with  modern  progress.  The  town 
was  noisier  and  dirtier  than  in  days  of  yore.  He  had  come  to 
meet  Nicola  Pisano  and  company  ;  but  the  ghosts  wouldn't 
rise.  "  Penny  whistles  from  the  railroad  perpetual,  and  view 
of  town  from  river  totally  destroyed  by  iron  pedestrian  bridge. 
Lay  awake  very  sad  from  one  to  half-past  four,  but  when  I 
sleep  my  dreams  are  now  almost  always  pleasant,  often  very 
rational.  A  really  rather  beautiful  one  of  consoling  an  idiot 
youth  who  had  been  driven  fierce,  and  making  him  gentle, 
might  be  a  lesson  about  Italy.  But  what  is  Italy  without  her 
sky — or  her  religion  ^  "  So  he  broke  off  work  in  the  Baptistery 
on  Michaelmas  Day  at  noon,  and  ordered  the  carriage  for 
Lucca. 

Every  one  knows  the  route  ;  over  the  Maremma,  between 
the  sea  and  the  mountains.  Peaks  of  Carrara  clouded  to  the 
north  ;  ruins  of  Ripafratta  frowning  over  the  crags  ;  ''  vines 
olives,  precipices."  At  last  you  see  a  neat  little  town,  boxed 
up  in  four  neat  walls,  with  rows  of  trees  on  the  ramparts  and 
towers  looking  over  the  trees  ;    it  is  just  like  the  mediasval 


THE   PALACE  OF  PAOLO  GUINIGI,   LUCCA 


RUSKIN'S    ILARIA  89 

town  in  the  background  of  a  triptych.  Silk-mills  there  are, 
but  not  in  evidence — at  least,  so  it  was  twenty  years  ago. 

As  we  drove  up  to  the  gate  that  afternoon  the  Customs 
officers  turned  out,  and  we  laughed  when  the  coachman  shouted: 
"  English  family  !  Nothing  to  declare  !  "  and  the  officers 
bowed,  unquestioning.  "  So  much  nicer,  isn't  it  }  "  said 
Ruskin,  "  than  being  bundled  about  among  trucks  and  all  the 
hideous  things  they  heap  round  railway  stations  "  ;  and  in  a 
few  minutes  we  were  in  front  of  the  Hotel  Royal  of  the 
Universe.  Signor  Ruskino  was  expected  ;  family  and  servants 
were  at  the  door  ;  everybody  shook  hands.  The  cook  was 
busy  with  the  dinner,  I  think  ;  for  when  we  had  seen  our 
rooms — he  took  the  plainest  of  the  tall,  partitioned  suite 
with  rococo  decorations,  palatial  but  tarnished — *'  First,"  he 
said,  **  I  must  go  and  see  the  cook  ;  "  and  so  away  to  the 
kitchen. 

He  was  patient  of  life's  little  worries  ;  but  he  liked  a  good 
dinner  when  it  was  there.  I  remember  the  serviette  full  of 
crumbly  chestnuts,  and  the  Hermitage — afternoon  sun  mean- 
while beating  through  half-shut  persianes  in  dusty  air,  and  a 
peep  of  greeny-blue  hills  over  the  square — Ruskin  lifting  his 
glass  for  a  birthday  toast.  There  was  a  certain  damsel,  whose 
own  folk  called  her  the  Michaelmas  goose  ;  he  put  it  more 
prettily :  "  Here's  to  St.  Michael,  and  Dorrie,  and  All 
Angels  !  " 

Then  he  went  out  to  see  Ilaria. 

She  was  an  early  flame  of  his.  He  must  have  seen  Ilaria 
berore  1845,  ^^^  ^^  was  in  that  eventful  year  he  fell  in  love. 
Ilaria  was,  of  course,  the  marble  Lady  of  Lucca  ;  but  falling 
in  love  is  not  too  strong  a  word. 

The  Forty-five  in  the  nineteenth  century  had  its  Rebellion 
almost  as  full  of  consequences  as  the  Forty-five  of  the  century 
before.  The  raid  of  Prince  Charlie  opened  up  the  Highlands, 
and  gave  us  Ossian  and  Scott  and  Romanticism  ;  little  else. 
The  raid  of  John  Ruskin,  in  1845,  for  the  first  time  wandering 


90  RUSKIN    RELICS 

free  and  working  out  his  own  thoughts  among  the  Old  Masters- 
and  mediaeval  ruins  of  Italy,  started  the  whole  movement 
which  made  British  art  decorative  and  philanthropic.  There 
were  others  helping,  but  he  led  the  way  ;  and  it  was  in  that 
Forty-five  that  he  '*went  up  the  Three  Steps  and  in  at  the 
Doer." 

The  passage  in  which  he  first  described  Ilaria  is  almost 
hackneyed.  "  She  is  lying  on  a  simple  couch  with  a  hound  at 
her  feet.  .  .  .  The  hair  is  bound  in  a  flat  braid  over  the  fair 
brow,  the  sweet  and  arched  eyes  are  closed,  the  tenderness  of 
the  loving  lips  is  set  and  quiet  ;  there  is  that  about  them  which 
forbids  breath  ;  something  which  is  not  death  nor  sleep,  but 
the  pure  image  of  both." 

Who  or  what  the  lady  might  have  been  in  the  flesh  he 
hardly  seems  to  have  cared  ;  at  least  he  never  dwelt  on  the 
story.  She  was  daughter  of  a  Marquis  of  Carretto,  and  wife 
of  Paolo  Guinigi,  chief  of  a  powerful  family  in  Lucca.  In 
1405  she  died.  In  141 3  Paolo  was  building  that  palace  with 
the  tower,  now  a  poor-house,  from  which  he  ruled  his  fellow 
townsmen  with  a  rod  of  iron.  She  never  saw  the  arcaded 
palace,  and  the  frowning,  machicolated  tower  ;  she  could  never 
have  had  part  or  lot  in  the  tyranny  of  his  later  rule.  We 
often  read  in  history  of  a  woman  keeping  within  bounds  the 
nascent  fierceness  of  a  man  who — losing  her — let  himself  go 
and  became  the  scourge  of  his  world.  But  in  all  his  pride 
Paolo  remembered  the  pretty  wife,  untimely  lost. 

The  very  year  he  built  his  castle  he  tempted  away  the 
greatest  sculptor  of  the  age  from  his  native  town  and  thronging 
engagements  to  carve  her  a  tomb.  Jacopo  della  Quercia  came 
to  Lucca  in  141 3,  and  six  years  later  left  after  finishing  this  and 
other  sculptures  there.  He  could  hardly  have  known  Ilaria  ^ 
he  must  have  worked  from  very  insufiicient  materials  in  gettmg 
her  portrait,  and  it  must  have  been  a  tiresome  and  delicate 
business  to  satisfy  his  patron,  his  tyrant.  But  then  Quercia 
was  "  a  most  amiable  and  modest  man,"  and  he  had  the  secret 


8    2 


RUSKIN'S    ILARIA  93 

of  noble  portraiture,  ''Truth  lovingly  told."  The  sort  of 
critics  who  do  not  gush  say  of  this  work  that  it  is  the  first 
masterpiece  of  the  Early  Renaissance.  It  has  all  the  best 
qualities  of  mediaeval  art — its  severe  symbolism  and  decorative 
effect,  with  all  the  best  of  the  later  classicism — its  reality, 
softness  and  sweetness. 

Paolo's  enemies  before  long  drove  him  out  of  Lucca,  and 
the  city  wreaked  vengeance  on  the  tyrant  by  shattering  his 
wife's  tomb,  this  masterpiece.  Somehow  the  effigy  itself  was 
spared,  and  set  up  again  with  bits  of  the  wreck  against  the 
bare  church  wall.  It  was  this  dead  lady,  this  marble  lady,  with 
browned,  translucent  cheeks,  and  little  nose  just  bruised  away 
at  the  tip,  that  took  Ruskin's  imagination  in  his  youth.  In  his 
age  he  wrote,  "  It  is  forty  years  since  I  first  saw  it,  and  I  have 
never  found  its  like." 

For  a  month,  with  an  interval  at  Florence,  he  kept  me 
pretty  closely  at  work  drawing  Ilaria — side-face,  full-face, 
three-quarters,  every  way  ;  together  with  bits  of  detail  from 
the  early  thirteenth-century  porch  of  St.  Martin's  and  other 
churches,  and  some  copies  in  the  picture  gallery.  He  painted 
hard  himself,  and  never  did  better  work  in  his  life.  Two 
studies,  "  half-imperial,"  of  the  facade  of  St.  Martin's  are 
especially  well  known  ;  one  was  at  the  Academy  (winter  1901) 
and  one  at  the  same  time  at  the  Royal  Water-colour  Society's 
Exhibition.  He  used  to  sit  in  quaint  attitudes  on  his  camp- 
stool  in  the  square,  manipulating  his  drawing-board  with  one 
hand  and  his  paint-brush  with  the  other  ;  Baxter,  his  valet, 
holding  the  colour-box  up  for  him  to  dip  into,  and  a  little 
crowd  of  chatterers  looking  on.  He  rather  enjoyed  an  audience, 
and  sometimes  used  to  bring  back  odd  gleanings  of  their 
remarks  when  he  came  in  to  luncheon.  One  ragged  boy, 
personally  conducting  a  friend  from  the  country,  was  overheard 
enumerating  the  strangers'  meals  at  the  hotel :  "  They  eat 
much,  much,  these  English  !  "  Of  course,  most  in  the  crowd 
knew  him,   or  about   him.      The  dean  and  chapter  came  to 


94  RUSKIN    RELICS 

approve,  the  choir  to  grin,  and  the  gendarmes  to  patronise  ;  a 
few  French  tourists  hovered  round,  but  no  English  that  I 
remember. 

After  these  long  mornings  of  work — inside  when  it  rained, 
outside  when  it  shone — we  always  went  for  a  ramble  or  a  drive. 
One  venturesome  start  in  a  thunderstorm  I  recollect,  for  Ruskin 
was  not  the  least  timid,  as  you  might  expect  from  his  highly- 
strung  temperament.  He  used  to  walk  planks  and  look  down 
precipices,  too,  like  a  regular  steeple-jack,  and  handle  all  sorts 
of  animals  fearlessly.  This  thunderstorm  gave  us  grand 
Turneresque  effects,  of  which  I  have  a  sketch,  but  no  descrip- 
tion ;  but  I  have  borrowed  an  old  letter  of  the  time  which 
gives  a  fair  sample  of  an  afternoon  with  Ruskin.  It  is  dated 
October  28,  1882. 

"  A  biting  scirocco  was  blowing,  but  we  started  in  the  usual 
carriage  driven  by  the  boy  with  the  red  tie.  As  we  left  the  hotel 
an  army  of  beggars  hailed  the  Professor,  who  solemnly 
distributed  pence,  to  lighten  his  pocket  and  his  mind.  Then 
we  scampered  through  the  streets,  which  are  all  pavement,  and 
none  broader  than  Hanway  Street  ;  but  everybody  drives 
furiously  in  them  as  a  point  of  Lucchese  and  Tuscan  honour, 
and  nobody  seems  to  be  run  over. 

"  Out  through  the  city  walls  you  are  in  the  country  at  once. 
Indeed,  I  can't  help  thinking  of  the  town  as  a  garden  where 
houses  are  bedded  out  instead  of  flowers  ;  they  are  so  close 
packed,  so  varied  and  pretty.  But  out  at  the  gate  it  is  a  wide 
stretch  of  plain  with  mountains  all  round,  and  bright  cottages, 
cadmium-yellow  in  the  stubble-fields  and  cane-brakes,  for  they 
thatch  the  maize-heads  over  the  roofs  by  way  of  storage.  Out 
of  one  quite  decent-looking  farm-house  a  decent-looking  woman 
came  rushing  and  gesticulating  after  the  carriage.  The  Professor 
called  on  the  driver  to  stop  ;  and  the  woman,  out  of  breath, 
declared  she  was  the  mother  of  five  and  wanted  charity.  He 
gave  her  a  note ;  notes,  you  know,  can  be  a  good  deal  less  than 
five  pounds  in  Italy. 


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RUSKIN'S    ILARIA  97 

"  At  the  foot  of  the  hills,  south  of  Lucca,  we  left  the 
carriage  and  walked  up  the  road  ;  Baxter,  too,  with  the 
umbrella,  coat,  camp-stool  and  geological  hammer  as  usual. 
The  road  goes  up  through  chestnuts  and  under  vines,  till  you 
get  to  some  farms  and  a  church  on  the  top  of  the  buttress- 
hills,  with  a  splendid  view  of  Lucca  and  the  valley,  behind  rich 
slopes  of  autumn  colours,  and  a  monastery  with  its  cypresses  in 
the  middle  distance.  Then  we  dived  into  a  valley  and  crossed 
a  marble  quarry,  for  all  the  stones  here  are  marble  ;  the  road 
is  mended  with  marble,  and  the  pigstyes  are  built  of  marble  ; 
and  then  we  scrambled  up  the  main  hill.  There  is  a  sort  of 
track  through  chestnut  and  myrtle  and  arbutus  with  scarlet 
fruit  against  the  sky.  Girls  were  gathering  chestnuts  and 
arbutus  berries — such  a  picture  ! 

"  So  with  an  hour's  scrambling  we  came  out   through  a 
wood  of  stone  pines  to   the  top,   a  sort  of  marble  platform. 
The  scirocco  had  blown  us  up  fine  weather  ;  the  Carrara  hills 
were  clear,  and  the  Apennines  for  miles;  fantastic  peaks,   all 
sorts  of  gables,   pyramids,   cones,   and  domes.     The  sea  was 
ridged  and  beating  hard  on  the  shore   of  the  Maremma  ;  the 
bay  of  Spezia  in  the  distance,  and  little  Lucca,  tidy  and  square 
below,  tucked  into  its  four  walls  like  a  baby  in  a  cot  with  a 
patchwork  quilt.     I  stayed  ten  minutes  to  get  a  sketch,  while 
the  Professor  and  Baxter  howked  out  a  particularly  contorted 
bit  of  marble,  and  then  we  plunged  through  the  pines  on  the 
back  of  the  ridge  to  get  a  view  southward.     This,  you  know, 
is  the  wood  where  Ugolino  in  Dante  dreamed  he  was  hunting 
when  they  had  shut  him  up  to  starve  in  the  Famine  Tower  at 
Pisa,  and  it  deserves  its  fame.     It  is  quite  another  world  from 
the  hot  rich  valleys  below  ;  among  the   trees  there  are  fresh, 
English-looking  meadows  with  daisies  very  big  and  very  pink, 
and  beyond — the  wonderful  Mediterranean  coast,  rose  colour  in 
the  sunset.     Pisa  far  down  there  showed  every  detail  distinct, 
cathedral  and  leaning  tower  like  toys ;    even  at   Leghorn  we 
could  see  the  ships  in  port.     It  was  like  looking  on  the  world 

G 


98  RUSKIN    RELICS 

from    the    angels*    point  of    view ;    a   glimpse    through    the 
centuries. 

*'  But  the  sun  was  half-way  below  the  sea,  and  we  turned 
and  raced  the  darkness  down  to  the  valley,  along  a  path  some 
six  inches  wide,  with  a  marble  precipice  below  and  a  clay  bank 
above.  Then  the  moon  rose  ;  a  regular  conventional  Italian 
■  moon,  chequering  the  path  like  sunshine,  lamping  the  cypresses 
and  campaniles.  Our  driver  was  asleep ;  we  stirred  him  out 
and  drove  through  misty  by-roads  to  the  town  gates.  Out 
came  the  Customs  officer.  '  Have  you  anything  to  declare, 
gentlemen  .'' '  '  Nothing,  sir  ! '  '  Felice  sera,  signori !  '  'A 
happy  evening,  sir  ! ' 

"  The  streets  were  very  quiet  though  it  was  not  late.  By 
the  Dominican  convent,  in  the  moonlight,  there  was  a  woman 
kissing  the  great  crucifix  ;  few  other  folk  about ;  and  we  made 
the  square  ring  again  when  we  chased  the  moon  into  the  plane- 
trees  and  rattled  up  to  the  hotel  door." 

One  morning  toward  the  end  of  October,  soon  before  we 
left  Lucca,  I  went  to  work  on  a  last  drawing  of  Ilaria  (since 
honoured  by  Ruskin  with  a  place  in  his  Sheffield  museum)  and 
found  the  marble  wet  and  fouled.  Somebody  had  been  taking 
a  cast.  After  long  days  in  the  quiet  cathedral,  among  so  many 
haunting  thoughts,  studying  the  face,  it  had  grown  almost  as 
alive  to  me  as  it  always  was  to  him.  Even  I  felt  a  little  shock. 
It  was  a  liberty,  somebody  taking  a  cast !  At  breakfast  entered 
a  not  very  prepossessing  fellow  carrying  a  plaster  mask. 
Signor  Ruskin  had  asked  at  the  shop  ;  one  was  now  made. 

I  never  saw  him  more  moved.  In  a  storm  of  anger  he  left 
the  room,  crying  out,  "  Send  him  away."  Fortunately  we  had 
with  us  Henry  R.  Newman,  the  American  artist,  then  working 
for  Ruskin  at  Florence.  He  could  do  the  talking  to  the 
disappointed,  enraged  Italian,  and  got  rid  of  him — and  a 
Napoleon  of  mine — after  awhile.  I  was  thankful  to  Newman 
for  getting  rid  of  the  cast  as  well  ;  and  when  the  coast  was 
clear  Ruskin   looked  in,  rather   apologetic   after  his   outburst. 


RUSKIN'S    ILARIA  loi 

"  I  hope  you  didn't  give  the  fellow  anything,"  he  said,  and,  of 
course,  I  was  much  too  weak-minded  to  fight  the  case. 

But  I  still  think  the  object-lesson  was  well  worth  a  Napoleon. 
That  ghastly  thing  was  not  our  Ilaria  ;  any  cast  is  a  hard,  dead 
caricature  if  once  you  have  really  known  the  living,  ancient 
marble.  And  the  wrath  of  Ruskin  laid  his  secret  bare.  Do 
you  think  he  could  have  stirred  the  world  with  mere  flourishes 
from  the  pen  ?  Falling  in  love  was  not  too  strong  a  word  for 
the  feeling  that  dictated,  over  Ilaria's  marble  portrait,  his  plea 
for  sincerity  in  art  :  "  If  any  of  us,  after  staying  for  a  time 
beside  this  tomb,  could  see,  through  his  tears,  one  of  the  vain 
and  unkind  encumbrances  of  the  grave,  which,  in  these  hollow 
and  heartless  days,  feigned  sorrow  builds  to  foolish  pride, 
he  would,  I  believe,  receive  such  a  lesson  of  love  as  no 
coldness  could  refuse,  no  fatuity  forget,  and  no  insolence 
disobey." 

To  gather  up  the  threads  it  may  be  worth  while  noting  briefly 
the  chief  incidents  in  this  Italian  tour,  with  a  few  comments 
from  Ruskin's  unpublished  diary,  showing  how  rapidly  pleasure 
and  pain  alternated  in  his  moods. 

On  arrival,  walking  round  the  town,  first  to  Ilaria  and  last 
to  San  Romano,  he  notes  :  "  Found  all.  D.  G."  The  next 
day  he  heard  of  the  death  of  J.  W.  Bunney,  who  had  done  so 
much  work  for  him  at  Venice,  notably  the  large  picture  of 
St.  Mark's  now  in  the  Shefiield  museum.  We  often  thought 
Ruskin  did  not  feel  these  losses,  and  was  a  little  hard  when 
news  came  that  old  friends  were  gone.  But  under  the  apparent 
stoicism  there  was  much  real  emotion  ;  indeed,  some  of  his  later 
attacks  of  mental  illness  followed  such  events.  I  do  not  say 
they  were  the  only  causes,  but  they  contributed.  In  April 
1887,  the  sudden  death  of  Laurence  Hilliard,  on  board  ship 
in  the  ^Egean,  undoubtedly  turned  the  balance,  and  intensified 
weakness  and  worry  into  illness  of  many  months'  duration. 
In  this  case  he  wrote  :  *'  A  heavy  warning  to  me,  were  warning 
needed.     But  I  fear  death  too  constantly,  and  feel  it  too  fatally, 


102  '     RUSKIN    RELICS 

as  it  is."  I  think  his  fear  of  death  was  purely  the  dread  of 
leaving  his  work  undone,  with  some  shrinking  of  the  possible 
pain  ;  his  sense  of  death  was  in  the  growing  limitation  of  his 
powers,  which  he  could  only  forget  in  the  presence  of  beautiful 
landscape.  Thus  next  day,  on  the  Lucca  mountains,  he  "  sat 
long  watching  the  soft  sunlighted  classic  hills,  plumed  and 
downy  with  wood,  the  burning  russet  of  fallen  chestnuts  for 
foreground,  thinking  how  lovely  the  world  was  in  its  light, 
when  given." 

At  Florence  on  Oct.  4  :  "  Hotel  Gran  Bretagna  once  more  ; 
good  dinner  and  flask  of  Aleatico.  Nothing  hurt  of  Ponte 
Vecchio  or  the  rest."  Next  morning  the  pendulum  swung  the 
other  way,  partly,  I  am  afraid,  because  he  could  not  get  me  to 
be  ecstatic  about  the  Duomo,  and  I  almost  argued  him  into  a 
good  word  for  Bronzino's  "  Judith."  Then,  again,  a  drive  to 
Bellosguardo  and  a  beautiful  walk  made  it  all  right  again,  and 
a  visit  to  Fiesole  in  sunshine  redeemed  the  character  of  the 
neighbourhood.  But  the  great  event  was  his  introduction  to 
Mrs.  and  Miss  Francesca  Alexander,  brought  about  through 
Mr.  Newman,  and  followed  by  a  friendship  which  had  a  great 
and  happy  influence  on  his  later  life.  Miss  Alexander's  beautiful 
handwriting,  and  the  pathos  of  her  manuscript  "  Story  of  Ida," 
and  her  pen-drawings  to  the  "  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany," 
which  he  then  and  there  bought  for  "  St.  George "  and  the 
world,  were  a  great  discovery,  to  him  as  if  he  had  found  *'  the 
famous  stone  which  turneth  all  to  gold." 

Returning  to  Lucca  on  the  1 1  th  he  worked  with  zeal  and 
power  on  his  drawings  of  the  Duomo,  and  wrote  his  diary 
with  animation.  Here  is  a  vignette  from  it:  "Sat.  14th. 
Wet  afternoon  ;  bought  cheese  and  hunted  for  honey.  Found 
the  only  view  from  ramparts  in  the  evening.  Tanneries  and 
cotton-mills  spoil  the  north-west  side.  Girls  singing  in  a 
milly,  cicadesque,  incomprehensible  manner.  An  old  priest 
standing  to  hear  them — thinking — I  would  give  much  to  know 
what !  " 


RUSKIN'S    ILARIA 


103 


During  this  October  at  Lucca  he  was  visited  by  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  E.  R.  Robson  ;  Mr.  Robson  was  then  preparing  (or 
intended  by  the  authorities  to  prepare)  plans  for  a  museum 
at  Sheffield,  which  should  hold  the  collection  belonging  to 
the  St.  George's  Guild.  Mr.  Charles  Fairfax  Murray  also 
came  to  see  him  ;  he,  like  Randal,  Newman,  Rooke,  Alessandri 
and  one  or  two  others,  was  employed  by  Ruskin  on  drawings 
for  this  museum.  From  the  27th  to  the  29th  he  went  alone 
to  Florence,  on  a  farewell  visit  to  the  Alexanders,  returning 
to  Lucca  for  a  couple  of  days'  work  before  going  to  Pisa, 
where  he  had  asked  Angelo  Alessandri,  the  Venetian  painter, 
and  Giacomo  Boni,  the  Venetian  architect,  to  meet  him. 
Signor  Boni  is  now  world-famous  by  his  antiquarian  work  at 
Rome  ;  one  sees  his  name  in  the  papers,  expounding  the  Forum 
to  our  king  in  the  King's  English,  with  a  strange  legend  of  his 
Oxford  pupilship  to  Ruskin. 

He  and  Signor  Alessandri,  however,  were  not  strictly  pupils 
of  Ruskin,  who  had  met  them  during  the  winter  of  1876-77 
at  Venice,  and,  so  to  say,  adopted  them.  At  this  second  meeting 
he  liked  them  and  their  work  more  than  ever.  His  character 
of  them  is  given  in  the  first  of  his  lectures  on  returning  next 
year  to  Oxford  :  "  Clever  ones,  yes  ;  but  not  cleverer  than  a 
great  many  of  you  ;  eminent  only,  among  the  young  people  of 
the  present  day  whom  I  chance  to  know,  in  being  extremely 
old-fashioned  ;  and — don't  be  spiteful  when  I  say  so — but  really 
they  are,  all  the  four  of  them — two  lads  and  two  lassies — quite 
provokingly  good."  The  two  lads  were  Boni  and  Alessandri, 
one  of  the  lady  artists  was  Miss  Alexander.  But  it  was  a 
compliment  to  his  audience  to  call  them  cleverer  than  Boni, 
whose  great  power  already  showed  itself  in  his  keen  eye  and 
square  shoulders.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  must  have  looked 
something  like  him,  I  thought,  when  he  began  to  charm  the 
fierce  Republic  ;  but  there  the  comparison  ends.  Ruskin  set 
him  to  measure  Pisa  cathedral  all  over,  to  see  why  it  was  so 
irregular  ;  and  for  a  little  holiday  one  heavenly  morning  before 


104  RUSKIN    RELICS 

breakfast,  Boni  took  me  up  the  Baptistery,  outside,  even  to 
the  skirts  of  the  great  St.  John  on  the  top  of  the  dome — all 
Pisa  beneath,  and  the  Maremma  in  sheaves  of  mist  as  if  angels 
were  haymaking,  and  the  sea  and  the  mountains  bathed  in  blue 
atmosphere  around. 

These  days  of  busy  work  and  evenings  of  bright  talk 
were  too  soon  ended,  and  on  November  lo  we  took  our  first 
stage  northward  and  homeward. 


VII 


RUSKIN'S    MAPS 


VII 

RUSKIN'S    MAPS 


Reading  the  map  is  as  great  a  pleasure  to  some  people  as 
reading  a  story-book.  You  will  see  them  pore  over  the  atlas 
for  an  hour  together,  going  on  dream-journeys.  It  is  a  cheap 
way  of  globe-trotting,  and  gets  rid  of  the  discomforts  ;  only  one 
must  have  imagination  to  turn  the  wriggling  hair-lines  into 
vistas  of  river  scenery,  and  the  woolly-bear  shading  into  forested 
crests  and  peaks  against  the  sunset.  It  needs  a  good  deal  of 
imagination  to  get  over  the  ugliness  of  most  modern  maps  ; 
but  why  should  maps  be  ugly  ? 

That  is  a  question  which  Ruskin  often  asked,  and  he  gave 
a  great  deal  of  trouble  and  time  to  the  subject  :  not  enough  to 
carry  out  such  a  reformation  as  his  energetic  preaching  and 
teaching  did  effect  in  some  other  things,  but  perhaps  we  have 
not  quite  come  to  the  end  of  the  story  yet. 

Anyway,  the  map-readers,  and  all  who  have  known  the 
bliss  of  owning  a  Bible  with  a  "  Palestine  '*  for  solace  during 
sermon-time  in  childhood,  or  have  realised  the  privileges  of  even 
Bradshaw's  ugly  chart  on  a  long  journey — all  these  will  not 
think  it  strange  to  be  told  that  Ruskin  was  a  map-lover  too, 
and  that  he  was  nearly  as  fond  of  plans  as  of  pictures.  Indeed, 
the  old  complaint  against  his  art  criticism  was  that  he  wanted 
pictures  to  be  maps,  decoratively  coloured  diagrams  of  nature, 
in  which  you  could  find  your  way  about,  know  the  points  of 


io8 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


the   compass,  latitude,   altitude,  geology,   botany,  fauna,  flora, 
and  the  universal  gazetteer. 

He  says  in  the  Notes  on  his  Turner  Exhibition  that  he 
began  to  learn  drawing  by  copying  maps,  and  only  came  to 
pictures  later.     It  is  a  biographical  fact  that  his  first  use  of  a 


Ui^  i^^  >--f^  2^^K  ; 

« 

RUSKIN'S   FIRST   MAP   OF   ITALY 
At  seven  or  eight:  size  of  the  original 

paint-box  was  to  tint  seas  blue — not  skies  ;  and  to  ornament  his 
outline  with  a  good  full  red  and  green  and  yellow.  Here  is  his 
first  map  of  Italy,  facsimiled  from  the  coloured  original.  You 
see  how  he  tried  to  be  neat,  and  how  he  knew,  without  having 
to  amend  his  lettering,  to  put  one  D  and  two  R's  in  "  MEDI- 
TERRANEAN." About  Germany  he  was  always  antagonistic 
or  inattentive  ;  here,  you  see,  he  thinks  it  is  in  Austria  !     It  is 


GEOLOGY  ON  THE  OLD  ROAD 
By  John  Ruskin 


RUSKIN'S    MAPS  iii 

hardly  possible  that  he  was  really  copying  when  he  made  that 
characteristic  blunder. 

Why  do  we  refer  to  these  childishnesses  ?  Because  he — the 
art  critic  and  art  teacher — began  his  art  career  not  by  sketching 
people  or  cottages  or  flowers,  but  by  copying  maps  ;  and 
because  he  ended  his  career  in  bidding  his  hearers  do  likewise. 
Of  course  the  value  of  advice  entirely  depends  upon  what  you 
mean  to  do  with  it.  If  you  want  to  make  colourable  imitations 
of  fashionable  pictures,  don't  take  Ruskin's  word  for  anything. 
If  you  want  to  be  a  scholar  in  the  school  of  the  Old  Masters, 
then  you  might  do  worse  than  listen  to  him.  They  "  leant  on 
a  firm  and  determined  outline  " — that  is  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  ; 
they  started  with  painstaking  draughtmanship,  and  added  colour 
tint  by  tint  ;  and  so  he  says,  "  I  place  map-making  first  among 
the  elementary  exercises,"  and  so  forth,  and  made  his  young 
pupils  begin  with  simple  facsimile — "  If  you  can  draw  Italy  you 
know  something  about  form  " — and  then  paint  the  globe  with 
its  conflicting  shade  and  local  colour.  Afterwards,  in  setting 
one  at  Turner,  he  would  say,  "  I  want  you  to  make  a  map  of 
the  subject.  Get  the  masses  outlined,  and  fill  in  the  spaces 
with  the  main  colours  ;  and  that  will  do." 

The  next  photograph  is  from  a  coloured  drawing  of  the 
same  size  ;  the  pale  spaces  are  pink  and  yellow  and  green,  and 
the  Lake  of  Geneva,  which  looks  rather  blotchy  in  the  print,  is 
more  pleasant  in  ultramarine.  This  is  one  of  a  set  of  geological 
maps  made  to  illustrate  the  course  of  the  usual  tour  through 
France  and  the  Alps,  perhaps,  to  judge  by  the  handwriting,  for 
the  journey  of  1835,  when  he  made  special  preparations  to  study 
geology.  He  could  hardly  carry  a  bulky  sheet  or  atlas,  and  so 
extracted  just  what  he  required,  in  a  series  of  neat  little  pages, 
put  together  into  a  home-made  case,  ready  for  use  at  any 
moment.  Youngsters  who  take  this  kind  of  trouble  are  likely 
to  become  men  of  weight ;  at  least,  they  get  to  know  how 
interesting  the  world  is.  Ruskin  on  a  journey  was  never 
bored,  unless  he  was  ill  ;  he  looked  out  of  window  and  poked 


I  12 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


you  up  :  "  Now,  put  away  that  book  ;  we  are  just  coming  to 
the  chalk"  ;  or,  "  Are  you  looking  out  for  the  great  twist  in  the 
limestone  ?  "     And   the   changes   in   the  face   of  the  country, 


SKETCH   OF  SPAIN 
By  John  Ruskin 

with  new  flowers  and  varying  crops,  were  a  continual  enter- 
tainment. 

Another  use  of  maps  to  Ruskin  was  in  writing  the  descrip- 
tive eloquence  for  which  most  readers  chiefly  admire  him.  I 
remember  a  very  good  judge  of  pictures  and  books  once 
choosing  the  best  passage  of  Ruskin — not  that  such  "  bests  " 
come  to  much — and  fixing  on  the  bird's-eye-view  passage  in 
which  he  takes  you  with  the  stork  and  the  swallow  on  their 
northward  flight  over  the  varying  scenery  of  Europe  ("  Stones 


ias> 


■\,\BRAW 
or  THE 

VNIVERSfTY 


RUSKIN'S    MAPS  115 

of  Venice,"  II.,  vi.,  §  8  ;  ''  SeJectlons,"  I.,  §  20).  Now  this  has 
all  the  imaginative  charm  of  Hans  Christian  Andersen's  "Snow 
Queen,"  or  George  Macdonald's  "  At  the  Back  of  the  North 
Wind  "  ;  but  it  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  notes  on  the  map 
of  Europe — of  course,  by  a  map-lover. 

To  help  in  such  work  he  collected  maps  wherever  he  went. 
He  kept  them  in  a  special  set  of  drawers  in  his  study,  some 
mounted  on  spent  diagram-cards  from  his  lectures,  and  some 
dropping  to  pieces  with  wear  and  tear.  Among  these  are  still  his 
first  map  of  the  Lakes,  from  Jonathan  Otley's  or  Wordsworth's 
Guide,  and  his  old  Keller's  "  Switzerland  "  of  1844,  which  he 
used  forty  years  later,  saying  that  he  did  not  want  the  railways, 
and  no  new  map  showed  the  roads  better.  Of  favourite  towns, 
such  as  Venice  and  Amiens,  there  are  large  scale  plans,  the  best 
that  could  be  bought ;  and  of  some  Swiss  districts,  like 
Neuchatel,  there  is  quite  a  library  of  cartology.  A  highly 
detailed  map  of  MMoc,  from  a  wine  advertisement,  was  found 
useful  ;  likewise  Britain  with  the  centres  of  Trinity  College, 
London,  which  he  kept  for  its  clearness.'  Philip's  "Authentic 
Map  of  England  "  is  endorsed  *'  good  common  use,"  and  he 
even  kept  close  at  hand  a  set  of  children's  dissecting  maps. 
The  Ordnance  Survey  is  fully  represented,  but  because  too 
much  was  put  into  these  beautiful  six-inch  sheets,  he  has 
coloured  them  fancifully  and  vigorously,  to  get  clear  divisions 
of  important  parts.  Clearness  and  distinctness,  every  one  must 
feel,  are  not  the  strong  points  of  modern  cartography,  hence 
the  use  of  sketch-maps  :  such  as  this  of  Spain,  scribbled  on  a 
sheet  of  foolscap  to  keep  him  in  mind  of  the  graceful,  swinging 
coastline  and  the  proportions  of  the  provinces. 

The  overloaded  modern  map  is  a  work  of  reference — it  is  a 
dictionary,  not  a  book.  Ruskin  felt  that  it  was  useless  for 
educational  or  literary  purposes,  and  he  was  continually  trying 
to  improve  away  the  detail  and  to  substitute  graphic  statistics. 
One  line  of  this  attempt  was  in  the  direction  of  models.  Beck's 
raised  map  of  Switzerland  (1853)  was  often  in  use,  but  it  was 


ii6  RUSKIN    RELICS 

spoilt  for  him  by  the  shining  surface,  which  catches  high  lights 
and  distracts  the  eye  :  all  models  ought  to  be  painted  in  dead 
colours,  except  the  water,  which  needs  the  shine  for  the  sake  of 
transparency. 

So,  in  1 8  8 1 ,  when  he  was  working  at  the  physical  geology 
of  the  Coniston  neighbourhood,  he  tried  to  make  a  model  of  the 
hills  and  dales,  to  see  how  the  strike  and  dip  of  strata  and  the 
faults  and  dykes  in  the  rock  came  out  in  relation  to  ups  and 
downs,  lake-basins  and  crags,  and  so  forth.  He  found  model- 
ling too  tedious  to  carry  out  himself,  and,  with  characteristic 
oddness  in  his  employment  of  means  to  ends,  he  set  his  gardener, 
the  late  Dawson  Herdson,  on  the  job.  Herdson  made  a  very 
fair  general  sketch  in  clay  of  the  Old  Man,  and  the  main 
features  as  seen  from  the  Coniston  side  ;  but  he  had  not  pegged 
out  his  distances,  and  when  Dow  Crag  was  built  up  into 
emphatic  gloom,  and  Leverswater  hollowed  into  depth,  the 
smaller  heights  had  no  space  left  for  them,  and  the  effect  was 
altogether  too  willow-patterned.  Then  Ruskin  put  another  of 
his  employes  to  work,  and  after  much  labour  the  model  now  in 
the  Coniston  Museum  was  evolved. 

This  was  intended  to  be  photographed  or  engraved  in  a 
side-light,  as  one  of  a  series  of  physical  maps.  Another  was  to 
have  been  Savoy,  for  which  Ruskin  made  the  sketch  here  shown. 
The  black  Lake  of  Geneva  is  dark  blue  in  his  drawing  ;  the 
valleys  are  green,  and  the  mountains  roughly  knocked  in  with 
lamp-black  and  Chinese  white,  tinted  over  with  yellow  for 
limestone,  pink  for  Mont  Blanc  protogine,  and  red  for  gneiss. 
Rough  as  the  sketch  is,  you  see  the  structure  of  the  Alps,  the 
lie  of  the  land,  at  a  glance.  Towns,  roads,  and  all  the  rest 
should  be  shown,  he  said,  on  separate  plans. 

Towards  this  purpose  he  collected  bird's-eye  views  in  great 
variety,  from  Maclure  and  Macdonald's  lithograph  of  the 
Soudan,  to  quaint  old  panoramas,  of  which  one — the  mountains 
seen  from  the  Buet — is  quite  like  a  William  Blake  design  of 
Heaven  and  Hell,  and  fit  to  serve  as  a  background  to  all  the 


RUSKIN'S    MAPS 


117 


mythologies.  Also,  for  their  pleasant  picturesqueness,  he  liked 
the  queer  productions  of  ancient  cartographers,  such  as  Edmund 
Squib's  funny  map  of  China  (1655),  and  a  seventeenth-century 
production  called  "  The  New  Map  of  Muscovy,"   and   *'  The 


'^'*-*y»tf»fc=-' 


yj 


^9^31^5^. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  FRANCE 
By  John  Ruskin 

Course  of  the  Great  River  Wolga,'*  by  A.  Olearius ;  with 
pictures  of  Russian  peasants  along  the  banks,  and  the  camels 
of  *'  the  Tartar  who  dwells  on  the  plains  of  Thibet."  Such 
maps  have  the  charm  of  graphic  expression  ;  they  don't  pretend 
to  be  gazetteers,  but  they  take  you  about  the  country  with  the 
entertainment  of  a  traveller's  tale. 

They   are  decorative   also ;    that  was    another   appeal   to 


ii8  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Ruskin.  William  Morris  has  shown  in  the  illustrations  to  the 
Saga  Library  how  maps  can  become  picturesque  designs,  and 
this  was  much  on  the  lines  that  Ruskin  would  have  followed. 
He  might  not  have  inserted  dragons  of  the  deep,  nor,  as  in 
Drayton's  "  Polyolbion,"  nymphs  and  shepherds  on  the  hills  and 
lakes,  out  of  all  proportion  and  possibility  ;  but  he  thought  a 
map  could  be  far  more  explanatory  and  ornamental  than  the 
usual  school  atlas. 

His  attempt  at  a  diagrammatic  history  of  France,  sketched 
on  a  page  of  note-paper,  was  engraved  for  "  Our  Fathers  have 
Told  Us  " — his  projected  school  history  of  the  "  Nice  Things 
that  have  Happened."  You  see — and  for  lack  of  space  I  must 
leave  it  for  your  further  insight — how  he  designed  to  show  the 
roses  of  Provence  and  the  lilies  of  France  in  this  garden  of 
Gaul,  at  one  time  feebly  struggling,  then  blowing  fully  and 
freely  spreading,  then  broken  in  upon  by  the  wild  beast  of 
war  ;  the  lily  bed  trampled  and  ruined  ;  Aquitaine  wasted  to 
blankness,  and  so  forth.  Worked  out  completely,  an  atlas 
of  history  on  this  plan  might  be  as  pretty  as  any  picture-book. 
A  child  accustomed  to  such  maps  would  have  Httle  trouble  in 
remembering  the  outlines  of  national  growth,  and  the  whole 
tedious  business  of  dates  and  uncouth  names  would  be  infinitely 
lightened.  Perhaps,  some  day,  Ruskin's  hint  will  be  taken, 
and  his  suggestions  will  bear  fruit. 

He  never  cared  for  worship  and  admiration,  when  they  did 
not  mean  the  understanding  of  his  aims,  and  the  carrying  out  of 
his  work.  He  knew  his  gift  was  to  irrigate,  as  he  said — to 
suggest  and  stimulate.  People  called  him  an  egoist  ;  but  how 
wise  in  its  humility  was  the  close  of  his  preface  to  "  Love's 
Meinie  !  " — "  It  has  been  throughout  my  trust,  that  if  Death 
should  write  on  these,  '  What  this  man  began  to  build,  he  was 
not  able  to  finish,'  God  may  also  write  on  them,  not  in  anger 
but  in  aid,  '  A  stronger  than  he  cometh.'  "  And  for  much  that 
he  has  left  to  do,  no  greater  strength  is  needed,  but  only  the 
glory  of  going  on. 


VIII 


RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS 


VIII 
RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS 


In  his  introduction  to  the  Catalogue  of  a  Ruskin  Exhibition  at 
Boston,  U.S.A.,  in  1879,  Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton  wrote 
a  paragraph  which,  as  the  verdict  of  a  severely  discriminating — 
though  friendly — critic,  is  worth  reading  more  than  once  again. 
He  said  :  "  The  character  of  this  collection  is  unique.  These 
drawings  are  not  the  work  of  an  artist  by  profession  ;  there  is 
not  a  '  picture'  among  them.  They  are  the  studies  of  one  who, 
by  patience  and  industry,  by  single-minded  devotion  to  each 
special  task,  and  by  concentrated  attention  upon  it,  has  trained 
an  eye  of  exceptional  keenness  and  penetration,  and  a  hand  of 
equally  exceptional  delicacy  and  firmness  of  touch,  to  be  the 
responsive  instruments  of  faculties  of  observation  and  percep- 
tion such  as  have  seldom  been  bestowed  on  artist  or  on  poet.  Few 
of  these  drawings  were  undertaken  as  an  end  in  themselves,  but 
most  of  them  as  means  by  which  to  acquire  exact  knowledge  of 
the  facts  of  nature,  or  to  obtain  the  data  from  which  to  deduce 
a  principle  in  art,  or  to  preserve  a  record  of  the  work  of  periods 
in  which  art  gave  better  expression  to  the  higher  interests  and 
motives  of  life  than  at  the  present  day.  These  studies  may 
consequently  afford  lessons  to  the  proficients  in  art  not  less 
than  to  the  fresh  beginners.  The  beauty  of  some  of  them  will 
be  obvious  to  an  untrained  eye  ;  but  no  one  may  hope  to 
appreciate  them  at  their  worth  who  will  not,  in  a  respectful  and 
modest  spirit,  give  time  and  patience  to  their  study." 


122  RUSKIN    RELICS 

In  his  childhood,  long  before  he  thought  of  drawing  from 
Nature,  he  had  learnt  great  neatness  of  hand  by  amusing  him- 
self with  copying  out  his  juvenile  verses  to  look  like  print, 
by  drawing  maps  and  by  making  facsimiles  of  George 
Cruikshank's  etchings  in  his  "  Grimm's  Goblins."  His  father 
used  to  sketch  a  little  in  the  pre-historic  style,  and  was  fond  of 
pictures  ;  but  they  never  dreamed  of  making  John  an  artist. 
At  last,  when  he  was  thirteen,  and  his  adopted  sister,  Mary,  was 
taking  drawing  lessons  at  school  with  much  satisfaction  to  the 
family,  he,  too,  was  allowed  to  "learn  drawing."  Mr. 
Runciman,  his  master,  gave  him  "  copies  " — the  old,  bold 
pencil  copies — which  he  tried  to  imitate  in  a  kind  of  stipple,  at 
first,  but  soon  picked  up  the  manner,  and  in  a  year,  as  we  find 
from  old  letters,  was  talking  like  a  book  about  perspective  and 
composition,  and  going  to  begin  painting  "  on  grey  paper,  with 
a  few  of  the  simplest  colours,  in  order  to  learn  the  effects  of 
light  and  shade."  Mr.  Runciman  must  have  been  a  good 
teacher,  for  this  method  of  his,  on  grey  paper  with  a  few  simple 
colours,  to  get  light  and  shade,  is  exactly  what  John  Ruskin 
learnt  thoroughly  after  awhile,  and  taught  energeticallv  in 
his  turn  all  his  life.  But  Mr.  Runciman  could  not  bring  him 
to  paint  in  oil,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  had  much  of  a 
system  ;  for  one  of  John  Ruskin's  letters  inverse  to  his  father, 
written  early  in  1834,  says  : 

"  I  cannot  bear  to  paint  in  oil. 

C,  Fielding's  tints  alone  for  me  ! 
The  other  costs  me  double  toil, 
And  wants  some  fifty  coats  to  be 
Splashed  on  each  spot  successively," 

In  his  later  years  he  used  to  say  that  the  practical  reason 
why  he  never  went  on  with  oil  painting  was  that  he  had  to 
draw — and  to  keep  his  drawings — among  books  and  papers, 
and  oils  were  messy,  and  did  not  smell  nice.  But  no  doubt  the 
real  fact  was  that  his  drawings  were  mainly  meant  for  book- 


RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS  123 

illustration,  done  for  the  engraver,  and  intended,  on  a  small 
scale,  to  get  as  much  form  as  possible.  All  his  experiments 
in  oil  seem  to  have  been  suppressed  ;  though  his  water-colour 
practice,  especially  in  later  times,  was  to  use  Chinese  white,  and 
often  a  good  deal  of  it,  very  nearly  as  if  it  had  been  flake  white. 

After  some  feeble  attempts  by  himself  at  sketching  from 
Nature,  in  1831  and  1832,  he  went  abroad  with  his  parents  for 
the  summer  of  1833,  and  drew  diligently.  He  had  received 
for  a  birthday  present  the  volume  of  Rogers's  "  Italy,"  with 
Turner's  vignettes,  and  intended  to  make  something  like  it,  in 
a  book  of  verses  neatly  copied  out,  with  vignettes  reproduced 
in  fine  pen-work  from  his  sketches  on  the  spot.  Whenever 
the  carriage  stopped  he  would  snatch  a  sketch,  and  whenever 
they  put  up  for  the  night  he  would  write  up  his  poetical  diary. 
Coming  home,  he  began  his  great  work,  but  school  lessons 
interfered  ;  not  before  he  had  half  filled  the  blank  book,  and 
pasted  in  a  number  of  neat  and  pretty  vignettes,  of  which  the 
best  is  The  Jungfrau from  Lauterbrunnen,  reproduced  in  "The 
Poems  of  John  Ruskin,"  on  the  same  scale. 

Meanwhile,  he  had  come  under  the  influence  of  Samuel 
Prout,  whose  work  his  father  admired  ;  and  on  the  next  tour, 
in  1835,  Turner  was  forgotten  in  the  attempt  to  be  Prout. 
The  drawings  of  this  "  great  year,"  as  he  called  it,  when  they 
are  put  in  order,  show  a  wonderful  progress  trom  the  first  stifi^ 
and  timid  studies,  fresh  from  the  attempt  to  copy  Prout's 
lithographs,  to  a  free  and  quite  masterly  adaptation  of  Prout's 
'Mine  and  dot"  manner.  By  the  time  he  reached  the  Oberland 
and  Venice,  he  had  "  got  his  hand  in,"  and  the  subject  went 
down  upon  the  paper  with  ease  and  decision,  always  abstracted 
and  mannered,  but  with  a  feeling  after  style  which  was  entirely 
Ruskin.  Both  in  drawing  and  in  writing,  much  as  he  talked  of 
truth  and  simplicity,  he  was,  first  and  foremost,  the  stylist  : 
and  through  half  his  life  the  conscious  imitator  of  other  men's 
styles — Hooker  or  Carlyle,  Prout  or  Turner.  But  there  was 
always  more  of  Ruskin  than  of  his  model ;  and  even  in  those 


124  RUSKIN    RELICS 

juvenile  essays,  when  style  so  completely  overwhelms  fact,  as  In 
some  sketches  at  Venice  or  Innsbruck,  there  is  a  precocious 
completeness  and  charm,  as  in  the  art  of  youthful  nations, 
early  Greeks,  pre-Norman  English,  or  pre-Renaissance  Italians. 

The  pen-drawings  of  this  year  have  less  interest,  for  they 
were  made  from  the  originals  to  illustrate  another  intended 
manuscript,  and  the  life,  of  course,  went  out  of  them.  Some 
of  these  pen-drawings,  as  well  as  some  of  the  original  and 
superior  pencil-drawings,  are  published  in  facsimile  in  the 
"  Poems  "  and  "  Poetry  of  Architecture  "  (large  editions  of 
1 891  and  1893).  Other  facsimiles  are  given  in  *' Studies  in 
Both  Arts  "  and  "  Verona."  The  plates  in  these  volumes  very 
fairly  represent  Ruskin's  handiwork  at  different  periods,  and 
are  indispensable  to  any  one  who  wishes  to  study  it.  Plates  in 
"  Modern  Painters "  and  *'  Stones  of  Venice,"  nearly  all  by 
engravers  after  his  work,  do  not  represent  it  in  the  same 
authentic  manner. 

Before  he  had  completed  his  new  book  he  wanted  more 
skill  in  colour,  and  took  lessons  from  Copley  Fielding,  with 
no  great  result,  except  that  the  style  which  he  had  gained  by 
practice  abroad  was  lost  in  trying  after  new  models.  The 
sketches  of  his  period  as  an  Oxford  undergraduate  are  com- 
paratively tame  and  commonplace  (18 36-1 839),  though  he  did 
some  neat  bits  for  Mr.  Loudon's  wood  engraver  to  spoil  in 
the  papers  on  "  The  Poetry  of  Architecture,"  in  the  'Archi- 
tectural Magazine^  which  were  his  first  published  writings  on 
art. 

In  1840  he  broke  down  in  health,  after  winning  the 
Newdigate  prize  for  poetry  at  Oxford,  and  before  taking  his 
degree.  His  parents  went  with  him  in  the  autumn  to  spend 
the  winter  abroad,  as  a  cure  for  consumption.  He  did  the 
best  for  himself,  according  to  n^vv  lights  on  the  subject  of 
hygiene,  by  spending  nearly  all  his  time  sketching  in  the  open 
air.  Through  France  to  the  Loire  and  Auvergne,  round  the 
Riviera  to  Pisa  and  Florence  and  Rome,  we  can  trace  him  by 


RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS  125 

his  drawings,  made  now  on  a  new  method.  David  Roberts 
had  been  showing  his  Syrian  sketches,  hard  pencil  on  grey 
paper,  with  yellow  lights  in  body  colour,  and  the  new  style 
caught  young  Ruskin's  attention  before  he  started  for  his 
journey,  so  that  he  set  out  with  the  resolve  of  being  Roberts 
now.  The  same  decision  of  line  shows  itself  on  this  much 
larger  scale  ;  he  always  seems  to  know  what  he  wants,  and  to 
get  it  without  trouble  ;  though  when  one  remembers  that  these 
half-imperial  drawings  were  done  by  an  ailing  lad,  supposed  to 
be  within  danger  of  death,  it  is  not  a  little  remarkable  to  see  in 
them  such  evidences  of  tenacity  and  pluck. 

At  the  beginning  of  1841  they  moved  on  to  Naples,  and 
made  excursions  to  Salerno,  Amalfi  and  the  neighbourhood, 
always  with  a  drawing  to  bring  back  ;  and  when  he  was  on  his 
way  home,  through  North  Italy,  he  wrote  triumphantly  to  a 
friend  that  he  had  "  got  forty-seven  large  and  thirty-four 
small  sketches." 

But  what  he  could  do  with  the  stimulus  of  travel  he  could 
not  do  again  in  the  reaction  after  it  was  over.  He  was  not 
quite  well  yet,  and  went  to  Leamington  to  be  under  a  doctor, 
in  dull  lodgings,  and  without  any  mountains.  Still  he  drew. 
By  this  time  he  had  dropped  David  Roberts,  and  taken  up 
Turner,  whose  art  he  had  already  thought  of  defending  against 
the  magazine  critics.  It  was  in  these  circumstances  that  he 
made  the  <iAniboise^  from  a  sketch  of  the  year  before,  and 
certain  vignettes  for  engraving,  which  were  published  in 
**  Friendship's  Offering,"  with  his  poems.  In  the  new  Library 
edition,  vol.  ii.,  photographs  from  the  original  zAmboise^  and 
from  the  old  engraving  after  it,  are  given,  well  worth  com- 
paring. 

He  was  not  naturally  a  colourist.  In  later  life  he  found 
out  for  himself  the  ways  and  means  ot  producing  bits  of  very 
sweet  opalescent  colour,  but  at  any  time  was  capable  of 
relapsing  into  gaudiness,  in  hours  of  fatigue  or  ill-health  ;  and 
throughout  his  earlier  life  he  was  much  more  at  home  in  liwht 


126  RUSKIN    RELICS 

and  shade,  or  in  work  with  the  point.  It  was  not  that  he  did 
not  see  and  enjoy  colour.  To  judge  by  his  writings,  one  would 
think  that  he  lived  for  it,  almost  :  and  the  splendid  passage  in 
the  first  volume  of  "Modern  Painters,"  so  often  quoted  for  its 
word-painting  of  colour,  was  written  from  his  diary-notes  on 
the  way  back  from  Naples  in  1841.  He  made  a  drawing  of 
the  scene  he  described  ;  one  would  expect  at  least  an  attempt  at 
"  purple,  and  crimson,  and  scarlet,  like  the  curtains  of  God's 
tabernacle  "  ;  but  it  is  merely  washed  with  faint  tints  over  an 
elaborate  outline  of  the  architecture. 

So  the  passing  mood  in  sickness,  which  had  led  him  to  try 
after  Turnerian  colour,  left  him  in  health,  for  the  more  attain- 
able method  of  Turner's  "Liber  Studiorum,"  and  he  began,  in 
1842,  to  make  this  his  own.  A  slight  pencil  blocking  out, 
firm  and  emphatic  quill-pen  to  represent  the  etched  line,  and 
brushwork  in  brown,  rarely  in  black,  sometimes  with  a  little 
colour,  over  paper  usually  grey — this  was  after  all  the  manner 
that  suited  him  best,  and  very  nearly  what  Mr.  Runciman  had 
talked  about,  ten  years  before.  By  degrees,  year  after  year, 
the  pen  work  became  finer,  and  the  colour  more  predominant  ; 
the  solid  white,  used  at  first  for  high  lights,  invaded  the  tints 
and  gave  a  mystery  to  the  outline,  and  in  ten  years  more  he 
had  found  out  his  central  style,  a  manner  quite  his  own, 
producing  beautiful  results  but  inimitable  by  engraving, 
whether  the  old  style  of  steel-plate  or  the  new  style  of  photo- 
graphic process.  That  style  in  turn  developed  into  the  delicate 
and  often  dainty  water-colour  painting  of  his  later  years- 
passing  by  the  way  through  a  phase  in  which  the  pencil  took 
the  place  of  the  pen,  useful  for  getting  notes  of  architectural 
detail  and  mountain  form — and  never  quite  abandoned,  though 
the  pencil  drawings  of  the  later  period  became  a  distinct  series, 
free  and  emphatic  and  suggestive,  apart  from  the  more 
laborious  elaboration  of  his  last  paintings. 

In  1845  ^^  went  alone,  unaccompanied  by  parents  and 
family,  to  Italy,  and  found  adventures.     He  made  the  acquaint- 


RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS  127 

ance  of  the  primitive  masters  at  Lucca  and  Florence,  and 
copied  a  little  ;  then  to  the  Alps  to  look  for  Turner's  subjects 
in  the  Alpine  sketches  of  1842,  which  had  so  taken  his  heart. 
Turner  did  not  like  it  ;  it  was  dangerous  to  have  a  writing 
young  man  looking  behind  the  scenes  of  imaginative  picture 
production  ;  but  Ruskin  found  out  Turner,  and  was  all  the 
more  enthusiastic  for  the  discovery.  He  drew  the  Pass  of 
Faido,  and  saw  what  Turner  had  seen,  and  what  he  had 
invented,  more  Tv^onderful  than  any  transcript  from  Nature  ; 
and  afterwards  filled  halt  a  volume  with  the  endeavour  to 
expound  the  same.  Then,  with  his  versatility  of  sympathy,  he 
met  J.  D.  Harding,  who  was  not  so  much  his  teacher  as  a 
valued  friend,  and  together  they  went  to  Venice.  One  sketch- 
book leaf  of  this  time  is  particularly  interesting — with  a  pen 
and  tint  drawing  of  a  mill  at  Baveno  on  one  side,  and  a  slap- 
dash sunset  on  the  other,  almost  Harding.  These  are  photo- 
gravured in  the  "  Poems." 

The  drawings  of  1 846  were  the  first  serious  mountain 
studies,  afterwards  used  for  "  Modern  Painters,"  though  many 
things  intervened.  Sickness  at  first,  and  the  visit  to  Cross- 
mount  in  the  Highlands,  recorded  in  some  drawings,  not  his 
best ;  and  then  "  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture,"  for  which  he 
studied  in  Normandy  in  1848,  and  etched  the  plates  himself  in 
soft  ground — strong,  sketchy  plates  which  were  thought  a 
failure  at  the  time,  and  re-engraved  in  a  queer  imitation  of  the 
originals  by  a  professional  engraver  for  the  next  edition.  Then 
he  set  to  work  upon  "  Stones  of  Venice." 

He  had  already  some  material,  but  most  of  the  drawings 
were  made  in  two  winters,  November  1849  to  March  1850, 
and  September  1851  to  June  1852.  Many  of  the  best  have 
been  dispersed,  some  are  in  America,  but  enough  remain  to 
show  what  a  busy  time  it  was,  and  how  much  downright  draw- 
ing went  to  the  making  of  that  book  :  how  much  more  draw- 
ing, and  of  how  much  finer  quality  than  one  can  guess  at  from 
reading  the  book.      The   large   plates   in    "Examples  of  the 


128  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Architecture  of  Venice"  were  not  only  from  his  sketches,  but 
from  carefully  prepared  working  drawings.  For  a  mezzotint, 
like  the  Si.  Mark's  Portico  or  the  cArch  of  Cd  Contarini  Torta  di 
Ferro^  he  drew  the  outline  separately  for  etching,  and  made 
another  drawing  with  the  tint  for  the  completed  engraving. 
To  do  a  subject  over  again  seemed  no  grievance  with  him,  and 
there  are  many  examples  of  his  patience  in  trying  the  identical 
view  in  different  aspects  or  lights,  or  even  redrawing  it  from 
Nature  without  alteration,  merely  to  get  a  result  more  to  his 
mind.  That  the  result  was  worth  while  in  the  end  we  need  not 
stop  to  declare.  "Stones  of  Venice"  was  a  revelation  to  architects 
and  the  public,  and  for  a  long  while  exerted  an  enormous 
influence  upon  English  taste.  Suppose,  for  a  moment,  such  a 
book  had  been  written,  with  all  the  enthusiasm  and  learning  in 
the  world,  by  a  man  who  could  not  draw  ! 

The  later  volumes  of  "  Modern  Painters,"  which  followed 
this,  owed  their  success  in  great  measure  to  the  same  cause.  The 
engravings,  beautiful  as  they  are,  hardly  show  the  originals  ; 
though  from  the  book  one  knows  that  its  author  had  dwelt 
upon  the  aspects  of  Nature  with  more  than  a  tourist's  glance, 
and  that  he  had  struggled  with  the  problems  of  art  with  more 
than  an  amateur's  attention.  His  Aiguilles  and  Matterhorns, 
his  Aspen  and  his  mossy  stones,  his  repeated  studies  from 
Turner  and  the  Old  Masters,  down  to  the  enlargements  from 
illuminated  missals,  all  tell  the  same  tale  of  passionate  interest 
in  the  subject  and  penetrative  insight  into  the  situation.  They 
are  not,  as  Professor  Norton  says,  pictures  ;  but  incomplete  as 
they  are,  there  is  in  them  an  appeal  to  which  most  of  those  who 
love  pictures  will  respond. 

During  the  progress  of  "  Modern  Painters,"  Mr.  Ruskin 
planned  a  "  History  of  Swiss  Towns,"  for  which  he  spent  several 
summers  in  gathering  material.  His  drawings  for  this  series  were 
more  full  of  detail,  handled  with  extremest  fineness  in  some  parts 
and  with  great  breadth,  often  carelessness,  in  others ;  intended 
for  completion  and  engraving  when  time  should  serve.     But 


RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS  129 

this  time  never  came.  He  was  led  into  the  interests  in  political 
and  social  economy  which,  in  these  later  years,  with  a  public 
tired  of  hearing  about  Ruskin  and  art,  have  given  him  a  place 
among  the  prophets.  He  was  led  into  further  studies  of  the 
geology  of  scenery,  lightly  touched  in  "  Modern  Painters," 
and,  during  long  residence  in  Savoy  and  Switzerland,  drew  Alps 
chiefly  for  their  cleavages,  and  threw  the  drawings  aside.  He 
was  led  into  botanical  and  mineral  researches,  and  Egyptology 
and  Greek  coins,  and  other  by-ways,  always,  however,  drawing 
as  he  went,  but  drawing  subjects  less  interesting  to  the  general 
onlooker.  But  from  this  backwater  he  emerged  into  a  new  and 
more  developed  style  which  began  to  show  results  in  1866,  on 
a  long  summer  tour  in  the  Oberland,  when  he  made  the  sketch 
On  the  Reuss  below  Lucerne^  in  "  Poetry  of  Architecture  " — 
a  combination  of  such  breadth  and  delicacy  as  he  had  hardly 
attained  before,  and  much  fine  work  with  the  point. 

Next  year  but  one,  1868,  his  ancient  love  for  French  Gothic 
took  him  to  Abbeville.  There  the  new  style  had  full  scope  in 
the  delicate  drawings  of  that  date,  a  long  way  in  advance  of 
old  "  Seven  Lamps  "  period  :  and  the  same  kind  of  work  was 
continued  in  the  next  year  at  Verona  (May  to  September),  a 
summer  of  very  busy  painting  in  the  company  of  his  two  assist- 
ants, Mr.  William  Ward  and  the  late  Mr.  J.  W.  Bunney. 

The  Abbeville  drawings  were  shown  in  a  semi-public 
manner  at  a  little  exhibition  to  illustrate  his  lecture  on  the 
*'  Flamboyant  Architecture  of  the  Valley  of  the  Somme,"  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  January  29,  1869  ;  and  the  Verona  drawings 
at  a  similar  lecture  at  the  same  place  on  February  4,  1870. 
The  catalogue  of  the  latter  is  printed  in  '*  On  the  Old  Road," 
vol.  i.,  part  2,  with  twenty  pieces  marked  as  his  own. 

In  this  year  he  entered  on  his  duties  as  Slade  Professor 
at  Oxford,  and  before  long  had  established  a  drawing-school 
there,  which  took  up  a  great  part  of  his  attention.  Of  this 
period  is  a  sketch  "  Done  with  my  pupils  afield,"  and  he  used 
sometimes   to  draw  in  the  school,  and  often  to  draw  for  the 


130  RUSKIN    RELICS 

school.  A  Candle^  finely  shaded,  and  various  botanical  studies, 
were  meant  as  "  copies "  or  as  examples  of  the  treatment  he 
proposed  to  his  students  ;  and  the  catalogue  of  the  Ruskin 
Drawing  School  at  Oxford  contains  a  very  large  number  of 
items  by  himself,  from  the  great  St.  Catherine^  after  Luini,  to 
little  memoranda  of  plant  forms.  Several  of  these  examples 
of  his  hand  have  been  engraved  in  Mr.  E.  T.  Cook's  "  Studies 
in  Ruskin." 

In  1870  and  1872  he  was  again  drawing  at  Venice.  The 
elaborate  beginning  of  the  "  Riva  de'  Schiavoni,"  and  the 
effective  Rialto  (in  the  possession  of  Miss  Hilliard,  Coniston), 
done  one  morning  before  breakfast,  are  of  the  former  year.  In 
1874,  after  a  breakdown  in  health,  he  visited  Assisi,  Rome, 
and  Sicily,  and  beside  the  notes  of  Mount  Etna  and  Scylla 
he  brought  home  a  series  of  careful  copies  from  parts  of  the 
Botticelli  frescoes  at  the  Sistine  Chapel,  and  the  fully  realised, 
though  not  completed,  Glacier  des  Bossons.,  a  remarkable  piece 
of  landscape  work.  In  1876  he  went  again  to  Venice,  this 
time  chiefly  to  copy  Carpaccio,  though  some  of  his  best  later 
views  of  canals  and  palaces  bear  that  date,  or  the  early  part  of 
1877,  for  he  stayed  on  until  May  of  that  year.  Casa  Foscari 
(in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  Cunliffe,  Ambleside)  may  be  named 
as  a  characteristic  example  of  his  daring  point  of  view,  and 
success  in  giving  the  mass  of  building  in  steep  perspective. 

In  1878  an  exhibition  of  his  drawings  by  Turner  was  held 
at  the  Fine  Art  Society's  Galleries  in  New  Bond  Street.  During 
the  show  he  was  taken  seriously  ill,  and  while  convalescent  he 
amused  himself  by  arranging  a  small  collection  of  his  own 
sketches  to  add  to  the  exhibition.  His  catalogue  and  remarks 
are  given  in  the  later  editions  of  *'  Notes  on  his  Drawings  by 
Turner,"  &c.,  1878.  Next  year  a  number  of  his  studies  were 
shown  in  Boston,  U.S.A.,  under  the  management  of  Professor 
Charles  Eliot  Norton,  whose  appreciative  paragraph  we  have 
quoted. 

It  seemed  as  though  his  working  life  had  come  to  an  end 


RUSKIN'S    DRAWINGS  131 

at  the  time,  with  that  crisis  of  illness.  A  visit  to  Amiens  in 
1 880,  with  Mr.  Arthur  Severn  and  Mr  Brabazon,  gave  him  the 
subject  for  writing  the  "  Bible  of  Amiens,"  but  his  sketches  were 
less  vigorous  and  full.  But  in  1882  he  was  ordered  away  again 
for  rest ;  and,  as  forty  years  before,  he  took  his  rest — the  best 
rest  for  a  tired  brain — in  sketching.  He  gradually  warmed  to 
work  ;  at  Avallon,  in  Central  France,  he  began  with  a  few 
sketches  of  detail,  but  in  Italy  the  ancient  love  of  architecture 
took  hold  of  him,  and  he  drew  the  Porch  at  Lucca  assiduously. 
His  two  chief  drawings  of  this  subject  were  shown  in  the  next 
exhibition  of  the  R.W.S.,  and  one  of  them  at  the  R.A.  in 
1 90 1.  He  exhibited  on  many  occasions  at  the  Royal  Society 
of  Painters  in  Water  Colours,  having  been  elected  an  honorary 
member  in  1873.  He  said  at  the  time  to  a  visitor — "  Nothing 
ever  pleased  me  more.  I  have  always  been  abusing  the  artists, 
and  now  they  have  complimented  me.  They  always  said  I 
couldn't  draw,  and  it's  very  nice  to  think  they  give  me  credit 
for  knowing  something  about  art." 

Later  than  this  there  is  little  to  chronicle.  Ill-health  came 
down  upon  him,  and  his  last  drawings  were  done  to  amuse  his 
friend  of  "  Hortus  Inclusus  "  in  1886,  though  he  made  a  few 
pencil  notes  of  Langdale  Pikes  and  Calder  Abbey  in  1889. 

After  his  death  an  exhibition  of  his  sketches,  with  some 
personal  relics  and  added  examples  of  the  art  about  which  he 
had  written,  was  held  at  Coniston  in  the  summer  of  1900.  It 
attracted  over  10,000  visitors  to  the  village,  and  to  many  was  a 
revelation  of  Ruskin  in  a  new  character,  and  of  a  kind  of  art 
which  charmed  in  spite  of  all  they  had  been  accustomed  to  look 
for  in  pictures. 

In  January  and  February  1901,  a  similar  exhibition  was 
held  at  the  Royal  Society  of  Painters  in  Water  Colours, 
London.  Many  of  the  drawings  then  shown,  with  a  large 
series  of  engravings  after  his  work,  are  on  view  in  the  Ruskin 
Museum  at  the  Institute,  Coniston  ;  where,  in  1903,  the 
Fourth  Annual  Exhibition  contained  a  further  instalment  of 


132  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Ruskin  sketches  not  previously  shown  in  public,  giving 
examples  of  his  great  variety  in  subject  and  treatment,  ranging 
from  an  early  outline  of  Dover  (1831),  to  sketches  at  Avallon 
and  Clteaux  (1882;  see  above,  pages  48-51);  from  geological 
studies  of  Alps  to  notes  of  lions  and  tigers  at  the  Zoo,  and  the 
head  of  the  Venus  de'  Medici,  elaborately  shaded  ;  and  from 
the  carefully  finished  and  daintily  detailed  pen  and  tint  Valley 
of  Lauterbrunnen^  in  which  the  lens  is  needed  to  make  out 
tiny  chalets,  smaller  than  a  letter  of  this  type,  to  large  splashes 
of  water-colour,  one  of  which  (on  a  sheet  42  by  23  inches  in 
size)  is  identical  in  subject  with  the  view  by  Laurence  Hilliard 
given  at  page  33  of  this  volume. 

One  pair  of  sketches  among  these  has  a  curious  biographical 
interest.  When  Turner's  Sun  of  Venice  Going  out  to  Sea  was 
exhibited  at  the  Academy  (1843),  Ruskin  was  greatly  impressed 
with  its  wonderful  colour  and  truth,  but  especially  with  the 
reflections  and  eddies  of  the  calm  water,  on  which  he  wrote  a 
well-known  page  in  "Modern  Painters"  (vol.  i.  p.  357). 
Accustomed  to  write  from  notes  with  pen  and  pencil,  he 
forgot,  or  ignored,  the  rule  forbidding  visitors  at  the  Exhibition 
to  copy  the  pictures.  These  are  the  sketches  he  made,  and 
for  making  them  was  expelled  from  the  Exhibition. 


IX 

RUSKIN'S    HAND 


IX 
RUSKIN'S    HAND 


It  was  only  the  other  day  that  a  friend  showed  me  a  bundle  of 
old  papers,  saying,  "  Some  of  these  are  in  his  writing,  but 
I  don't  know  what  to  make  of  the  rest."  I  turned  them  over 
and  said,  "  Second  volume  of  '  Modern  Painters '  ;  original 
manuscript !  "  He  had  just  found  them,  rolled  up  in  brown 
paper,  in  a  cupboard,  where  they  had  been  for  years.  My 
friend,  who  was  intimate  with  Ruskin  from  his  childhood,  and 
of  course  knew  the  Professor's  later  handwriting  well,  hardlv 
believed  me  ;  the  difference  between  the  early  and  later  styles 
is  so  great. 

There  may  be  other  letters  and  papers  of  Ruskin's  in  exis- 
tence and  unrecognised  ;  not,  perhaps,  unprinted,  but  still  of 
great  value,  even  in  hard  cash.  Correspondents  who  beg  for 
a  Ruskin  autograph  and  a  bit  of  his  writing  from  those  whom 
they  suppose  to  have  plenty,  are  often  surprised  to  hear  that 
others  have  been  before  them,  and  that  now  the  only  way  is 
through  the  dealers  at  a  guinea  a  page  or  more.  He  told  me 
that  he  thought  the  manuscripts  of  his  best-known  works  had 
been  destroyed,  and  no  doubt  had  forgotten  that  many  of  them 
had  been  given  away  to  those  who  treasured  them.  Since  his 
death  a  considerable  part  has  been  brought  to  light,  but  of  the 
vast  quantity  of  writing — notes,  rough  copies,  fair  copies,  and 
letters,  done  in  a  busy  life  of  sixty  working  years — there 
may  be  much  more   to   find   scattered   through   the  world  : 


136  RUSKIN    RELICS 

for  Ruskin's  hand,  like  Nuremberg's,  goes  through  every 
land. 

In  1 88 1  a  Mr.  Atkinson  was  sent  to  Coniston  to  make  a 
bust  of  Ruskin.  With  his  usual  good  nature  to  every  one 
who  came  personally  into  contact  with  him — the  roughness  was 
only  that  of  his  sharp  pen — the  Professor  treated  the  unknown 
as  his  visitor,  found  him  lodgings  and  a  workshop,  and  a  place 
at  his  table  for  a  great  while,  during  which  the  bust  made  but 
slow  progress.  One  reason,  perhaps,  for  Mr.  Atkinson's  diffi- 
culty was  that  Ruskin  had  just  grown  a  beard,  and  the  well- 
known  face  was  no  longer  there  to  mould.  "  Can't  you  treat 
the  beard  early  Greek  fashion  ;  I  should  like  to  be  a  Bearded 
Bacchus  !  "  he  said.  In  spite  of  the  admitted  failure,  he  gave 
further  work  to  the  sculptor  in  casting  leaves  and  other  detail 
*'  for  St.  George's  Schools  " — that  visionary  object  on  which 
so  much  labour  and  thought  were  spent ;  and  this  use  of  casts 
from  natural  leaves,  I  am  told  by  Mr.  E.  Cooke,  was  really 
originated  by  Ruskin  in  the  Working  Men's  College  days, 
though  now  pretty  widely  known.  Some  of  Mr.  Atkinson's 
casts,  I  may  add,  are  on  view  in  the  Coniston  Museum.  But 
the  sculptor's  chief  personal  wish  was  to  get  a  mould  of  Ruskin's 
hand.  He  used  to  say  that  there  was  more  in  it  than  in  his 
face  ;  at  least,  it  was  the  most  characteristic  feature,  and 
representable  in  solid  form,  while  the  face,  depending  on  the 
bright  blue  eye  and  changeful  expression,  evaded  him  as  it 
evaded  more  celebrated  sculptors.  But  Ruskin  did  not  like 
being  oiled  and  moulded,  and  though  Mr.  Atkinson  made 
enticing  demonstrations  on  less  worthy  fingers,  till  we  were  all 
up  to  our  elbows  in  plaster  of  Paris,  he  never  to  my  knowledge 
won  his  point. 

"  Such  a  funny  hand,"  says  Browning's  lover,  "  it  was  like 
a  claw  !  "  Ruskin's  was  all  finger-grip  ;  long,  strong  talons, 
curiously  delicate-skinned  and  refined  in  form,  though  not 
academically  beautiful.  Those  whose  personal  acquaintance 
with  him  dated  only  from  the  later  years  never  knew  his  hand, 


RUSKIN'S    HAND 


^37 


for  then  it  had  lost  its  nervous  strength  ;  andin  cold  weather — 
the  greatest  half  of  the  year  in  the  North — the  hand  suffered 
more  than  the  head.  But  his  palm,  and  especially  the  back  of 
the  hand,  was  tiny.  When  he  rowed  his  boat  he  held  the  oars 
entirely  in  his  fingers  ;    when   he  shook   hands  you  felt   the 


ti.tA 


•«<'*^*  t^«-»^A,tf-  ^.t.       C*<^£,t 


CONISTON 
Written  by  John  Ruskin  and  Mary  Richardson,  1830 

pressure  of  the  fingers,  not  of  the  palm.  In  writing,  he  held 
the  pen  as  we  are  taught  to  hold  a  drawing-pencil,  and  the 
long  fingers  gave  much  more  play  to  the  point  than  is  usual  in 
formed  penmanship.  Knowing  that,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find 
that  his  writing  varies,  not  only  from  one  period  to  another, 
but  with  passing  moods.  Everybody  shows  some  of  this 
variety,  but  Ruskin's  hand  was  as  flexible  and  as  impressionable 
as  his  whole  being. 


138  RUSKIN    RELICS 

He  had  an  odd  way,  down  to  the  last,  of  "  printing"  an 
inscription  on  the  fly-leaf  of  a  book  or  on  the  mount  of  a 
drawing,  in  neat,  square  Roman  type,  inked  between  double 
lines  ruled  in  pencil.  Sometimes  giving  a  present  to  a  favoured 
visitor  he  would  say,  "  Stay,  I  must  write  your  name  in  it  "  ; 
and  you  expected  the  well-known  autograph  cheque-signature, 
scribbled  with  a  flourish.  But  no  !  Spectacles,  and  ruler, 
and  pencil  first  ;  two  carefully  ruled  lines,  an  eighth  of  an  inch 
apart ;  then  the  cork-handled,  fine  steel  pen,  and  laborious 
regularity  of  inscription  ;  till  the  onlooking  recipient  laughed 
outright  at  all  this  time  and  trouble  spent  on  a  trifle.  But 
Ruskin  was  quite  grave  about  it. 

This  was  a  reversion  to  early  habits.  His  juvenile  MSS., 
of  which  many  were  kept  by  his  parents  and  still  remain  at 
Brantwood,  contain  many  pages  of  similar  calligraphy.  His 
first  Latin  and  French  declensions  are  printed  in  pencil ;  at  the 
age  of  seven  he  wrote  the  first  copies  of  his  "  Harry  and 
Lucy  "  in  this  way,  pencilled  first  and  penned  over,  thinking  he 
was  an  author  making  a  book.  Many  children  do,  but  not  with 
his  tenacity  and  taste.  In  1828  (age  nine)  he  had  brought  this 
self-imposed  education  to  something  like  perfection  with  the  tiny 
"  print  "  of  "  Eudosia,"  page  after  page  showing  wonderful 
steadiness  of  hand  and  eye  ;  and  at  the  end  of  that  year  he  exe- 
cuted the  masterpiece  of  childish  ingenuity  which  he  described  in 
the  autobiographical  *' Harry  and  Lucy  " — the  poem  in  "  double 
print,"  all  the  down-strokes  doubled  :  *'  And  it  was  most  beauti- 
fully done,  you  may  be  sure,"  says  the  saucy  infant,  not  untruly. 
Some  of  his  early  mineral  catalogues,  begun  at  this  time,  appear 
to  have  been  continued  later,  though  the  difference  can  hardly 
be  told  from  any  improvement  in  the  penmanship. 

Meanwhile  his  ordinary  running  hand  was  a  shocking 
scribble,  but  in  the  middle  of  it  he  seems  to  have  pulled  himself 
up  continually,  or  he  was  pulled  up  by  an  overlooking  mother, 
and  the  wild  scrawl  becomes  tidy  and  neat.  I  suspect  that  his 
earlier  home   lessons  did  not  include  much  copybook  work. 


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RUSKIN'S    HAND  141 

He  developed  his  own  writing  like  other  precocious  boys  and 
girls,  though  there  is  some  trace  of  teaching  at  the  very  start 
But  after  1 830  he  exchanged,  perhaps  at  the  instance  of  superior 


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RUSKINS   HANDWRITING    IN    1837 

orders,  his  "  print  "  for  copperplate  ;  the  "  Iteriad  "  (1831)  is 
fair-copied  in- a  large,  regular  round-hand,  and  the  Tour  poems 
of  1833  are  in  a  smaller,  less  anxious,  but  more  formed  busi- 
ness style.  One  sees  the  father's  influence  coming  in,  and  all 
his  letters  to  the  old-fashioned  business  man  show  the  obvious 


142  RUSKIN    RELICS 

desire  to  please.  "  My  dear  papa  "  is  flourished  around  in  the 
most  approved  writing-master's  manner,  and  "  John  Ruskin  " 
at  the  end  is  in  black  letter,  finishing  a  sheet  of  impeccable 
commercial-hand,  in  which  the  free-and-easy  wording  contrasts 
quite  ludicrously  with  the  formal  writing. 

It  was  only,  or  chiefly,  to  his  father  that  such  letters  were 
written.  For  his  mother  he  had  another  hand  ;  for  his  friends 
and  for  himself  an  assortment  of  varying  scribbles.  But  there, 
I  think,  comes  out  one  of  the  leading  points  in  his  character. 
To  be  a  man  of  strong  thought  and  will,  innovator  in  art, 
science,  politics,  morality,  and  religion,  thare  never  was  such  a 
chameleon,  always  ready  to  colour  his  mind  after  his  surround- 
ings ;  all  things  to  all  men.  To  the  opponent  he  was  an 
opponent  ;  to  the  admirer  an  admirer,  without  at  once  testing 
the  sincerity  of  the  admiration  or  the  source  of  the  opposition. 
It  was  the  cause  of  many  regretted  incidents  in  public  life, 
but  in  private  life  the  ground  of  his  charm.  Nobody  who 
approached  him  in  kindness  failed  of  being  met  more  than 
half  way,  while  impertinence  and  rudeness,  however  unintended, 
struck  a  discord  at  once.  So  much  of  a  chameleon  he  was, 
that  he  could  persuade  himself  into  liking,  for  the  moment, 
and  for  the  sake  of  his  companion  on  the  spot,  many  a  thing 
he  had  denounced  or  derided  ;  and  sometimes  he  could  do 
curious  things  out  of  the  same  unrecognised  sympathy.  Once 
after  a  lecture,  leading  Taglioni  to  her  carriage  in  the  midst  of 
a  crowd  of  onlookers,  I  saw  him  cross  the  London  pavement 
with  an  old-world  minuet-step,  hardly  conscious,  I  am  sure,  of 
the  quaint  homage  he  was  paying  to  the  great  dancer  he  had 
admired  in  his  boyhood. 

Those  flourishes  of  the  pen  for  his  father's  pleasure  never 
appear  in  his  own  private  scribble.  His  ideas  came  too  quickly 
to  leave  him  time  for  ornament,  and  he  had  no  need  to  idle  in 
dots  and  circles  between  the  phrases.  His  spelling  was  always 
good,  but  he  never  stopped  to  punctuate  ;  a  dash  was  enough 
for  most  kinds  of  stops.    Letters  of  1845  and  1852  are  curious 


RUSKIN'S    HAND 


H3 


for  the  underlining  or  interlining  of  long  passages,  not,  appar- 
ently, for  emphasis  ;  possibly  to  mark  sections  of  these  general 
epistles  home  for  copying.     In  all  this  early  writing  there  is  an 


J(JJl  OJir- 


^b 


-^*«~<A^ 


7^  tv.^>^    ^.  ■^tY'^^  -"^^  -^J^ 


r,. 


NOTES   FOR   "STONES   OF  VENICE" 
By  John  Ruskin  (about  1850) 


effort  to  keep  pace  with  the  flow  of  thoughts,  even  in  the  verse  • 
he  wrote  so  much  that  mere  economy  of  time  must  have  driven 
him  at  speed  to  the  shortest  way  of  getting  the  matter  down. 
In  diaries  of  the  period  are  some  shorthand  notes  which  I  take 
to  be  his  ;  but  if  he  ever  tried  shorthand  he  dropped  it  soon. 


144  RUSKIN    RELICS 

The  model  upon  which  Ruskin's  usual  handwriting  was  at 
last  formed  was  his  mother's.  It  is  perhaps  a  commonplace  to 
say  that  we  all  betray  in  our  writing  the  greatest  personal 
influence  of  our  earlier  years.  While  penning  this  very  page, 
a  letter  has  just  been  brought  to  me  which  at  first  glance  put 
me  in  mind  of  a  friend  long  since  dead  :  it  is  from  his  school- 
master. Not  Ruskin's  father  nor  any  of  his  teachers  appear  to 
have  influenced  him  like  his  mother.  Her  more  deliberate 
writing  was  extremely  elegant  ;  rather  small,  moderately 
sloping,  with  a  pretty  combination  of  curve  and  angle,  and 
capitals  carefully  formed.  In  the  note- book  in  which  he 
composed  verses  from  1831  to  1838  you  can  see  the  develop- 
ment of  his  hand  from  a  spiky  and  cramped  boyish  scribble  to 
the  more  open  and  slightly  more  upright  style  of  1835  and 
1836,  the  year  of  his  matriculation  at  Oxford;  a  neat  and 
educated  penmanship,  easy  to  read  and  regular,  though  differing 
slightly  from  day  to  day  in  size  and  slope.  The  backward 
switch  of  his  y  and  forward  toss  of  the  tail  to  his  angular  /  are 
already  there  ;  and  the  dainty  shaping  of  capitals,  based  on 
Italic  or  Elzevir  print,  like  his  mother's,  with  suggestion  of  the 
serif  \n  a  little  elegant  curl  to  H  and  F.  Instead  of  spasmodic 
reform,  as  earlier,  there  is  perfect  steadiness  for  page  after 
page. 

At  Oxford  his  writing  became  rather  larger  and  looser, 
perhaps  from  Latin  exercises,  in  which  indubitable  distinctness 
is  required.  The  "  Poetry  of  Architecture  "  fair  copy  can  be 
seen  in  a  facsimile  in  the  new  Library  Edition ;  the  draft 
scribbled  in  a  sketch-book  during  Oxford  vacation  is  repro- 
duced (p.  141)  ;  you  note  the  tendency  to  round  the  foot  of  the 
down-stroke  and  the  length  of  the  greater  limbs  of  the  letters. 
He  used  to  tell  his  secretary  to  take  no  notice  of  a  letter  in 
which  h  and  /  looked  like  n  and  e. 

Leaving  Oxford  and  writing  hard  at  "  Modern  Painters  " 
earlier  volumes,  which  cost  a  great  deal  of  pen-work,  he  went 
back  to   the  smaller  hand   of  voluminous   authors,    and    the 


RUSKIN'S    HAND  145 

constant  attention  to  one  subject  gave  it  regularity.  But  the 
letters  of  the  time  are  naturally  more  impulsive  ;  indeed,  in 
1 849  there  are  bits  which  prefigure  his  latest  style  in  its  upright 
and  loose  sketchiness.  From  1849  or  1850  for  some  years  the 
chief  work  was  "Stones  of  Venice,"  and  the  note-books  and 
studies  for  this  are  fairly  represented  by  the  page  on  "  Sta. 
Maria  dell'  Orto."  This  is  the  earlier  "  Modern  Painters  " 
manner.  You  see  the  growing  freedom,  but  it  is  not  yet  wild 
and  whirling. 

The  difference  is  shown  at  a  glance  in  comparing  this  with 


Jw  YA-to^-^  -^-^  ir^^-A  y 


l>.XA^ 


RUSKIN'S   HANDWRITING   IN   1875 

the  sample  of  his  well-known  later  hand.  It  was  by  the  end 
of  the  'fifties  that  the  regular  and  tight  spikiness  began  finally 
to  disappear  and  give  place  to  far-flung  curves.  The  great 
turn  in  his  life  which  took  place  about  i860  showed  itself  in 
his  penmanship  as  well  as  in  his  thought,  and  the  final  style 
became  formed,  which,  with  merely  the  differences  of  better  or 
worse,  lasted  until  all  writing  was  over.  After  the  summer  of 
1889  it  was  at  very  rare  intervals  that  he  took  pen  in  hand. 
For  some  time  before  his  death  by  mere  disuse  he  seemed  to 
have  lost  the  very  power  of  writing  at  all.  At  last,  one  day, 
being  asked  for  his  signature,  he  set  down  with  shaking  fingers 
the  first  few  letters  of  it,  and  broke  off  with  "  Dear  me  !  I 
seem  to  have  forgotten  how  to  write  my  own  name  !  "  And 
he  wrote  no  more. 

There  have  been  authors  and  journalists  whose  printed 

K 


146  RUSKIN    RELICS 

work,  no  doubt,  exceeds  his  in  quantity  ;  but  in  reckoning 
the  sum  total  of  his  penmanship  we  must  not  forget  that  every 
printed  page  meant,  for  him,  several  written  pages,  especially 
in  earlier  books  ;  also,  that  he  was  a  conscientious  corre- 
spondent, and  every  day  wrote  many  letters.  It  may  be  set 
off  against  this  that  he  sometimes  used  the  help  of  an 
amanuensis,  though  he  rarely  dictated,  and  it  was  only  when 
he  had  hammered  his  subject  into  shape  that  he  had  it  copied 
for  the  printer.  Occasionally  in  late  years  he  let  it  be  type- 
written, but  most  of  his  work  was  done  before  the  age  of 
type-writers.  He  would  use  the  most  unlikely  copyists,  as 
when  he  got  the  little  girls  of  his  Brantwood  class  to  write  out 
his  notes.  All  he  asked  was  a  distinct  hand  and  a  docile  scribe. 
His  secretary,  like  the  secretary  in  "  Gil  Bias,"  did  everything 
but  write,  and  sometimes  was  packing  parcels  or  sweeping 
leaves  while  the  valet  was  copying  lectures  on  Greek  art. 
Some  early  MSS.  are  in  the  hand  of  George  Hobbs  ;  many  of 
the  later  were  written  by  Crawley;  none  by  Baxter.  At  other 
times  he  requisitioned  the  young  ladies  ;  it  was  for  this  that 
Mrs.  Severn  formed  her  large,  round,  upright  hand,  and  Miss 
Anderson  had  many  a  copying  task,  as  well  as  others  whose 
work  will  be  valued  by  collectors  for  its  corrections  from  the 
master's  pen,  like  the  quartz  which  holds  the  sparkle  of  gold. 

But  he  taught  them  to  write  distinctly — that  was  his  great 
requirement.  Once,  on  a  sleepless  night,  he  called  me,  with 
many  apologies,  to  write  from  dictation.  Naturally  I  wrote  fast 
to  get  my  job  done  and  return  to  my  slumbers ;  but  he 
continually  pulled  me  up  with,  "  I'm  sure  you're  scribbling. 
Let  me  see  if  I  can  read  it."  Out  on  the  fells,  taking  the  dip 
and  strike  of  strata,  or  among  the  cathedrals  making  notes  and 
measurements,  he  would  often  warn  his  assistant  of  the  folly  of 
hasty  scrawling.  "  I've  lost  so  much  time  and  trouble  by  my 
now  bad  writing,"  he  used  to  say. 

it  has  been  told  already  how  he  was  struck  at  first  by  Miss 
Francesca    Alexander's  handwriting    before    he    had    seen   her 


RUSKIN'S    HAND  147 

drawing,  which  afterwards  he  praised  so  highly.  The  distinct 
neatness  of  her  beautiful  calligraphy  appealed  to  his  love  for 
missals  and  the  lost  art,  as  he  feared,  of  the  true  scribe.  But 
of  queer  and  quaint  writing  he  was  impatient.  Words  were  to 
be  read,  not  played  with  in  decorative  affectations.  The  baser 
sort  of  business-hand  roused  him  to  scorn,  and  he  had  a  sharp 
eye  for  the  characteristics  of  a  cranky  or  insincere  corre- 
spondent. When  postcards  came  in,  like  many  others  he  did 
not  approve  of  them  and  never  used  them.  One  of  his  house- 
hold sometimes  got  postcards  written  in  Runes,  and,  seeing  the 
mystic  inscriptions,  he  wanted  to  know  why.  '*  So  that  people 
may  not  read  it,"  was  the  answer,  "What's  the  use  of  that .'' "" 
replied  Ruskin.  "Isn't  language  given  you  to  conceal  your 
thoughts .? " 


[For  further  illustrations  of  his  handwriting,  see  his  earliest 
"  printing "  at  seven  or  eight,  with  his  latest  current  style, 
actual  size,  on  page  108  ;  a  pencil  scribble  at  ten  or  eleven, 
page  171  ;  his  neater  writing  of  the  same  period,  on  page  199; 
his  ordinary  careful  penmanship  about  1835,  on  page  109; 
and  his  looser  final  hand,  pages  163  and  174.] 


X 


RUSKIN'S    MUSIC 


RUSKIN'S    MUSIC 


"  It  is  well  known,"  says  a  recent  newspaper  writer,  "  that 
Ruskin's  ear  was  as  deaf  to  musical  sound  as  his  eye  was  sensi- 
tive to  natural  beauty."  On  the  other  hand,  Miss  Wakefield, 
the  celebrated  singer  and  the  originator  of  country  Musical 
Competitions,  has  put  together  a  volume  of  158  pages — most 
of  them,  certainly,  in  rather  big  type — under  the  title  of 
"  Ruskin  on  Music."  The  inference,  of  course,  to  an  un- 
believing world  is  that  he  wrote  about  what  he  did  not  under- 
stand. But  Miss  Wakefield  understands  ;  and  she  says,  "  what 
is  to  be  admired  in  what  he  has  said  of  the  art  is  the  beautiful 
way  in  which  its  spiritual  meaning  and  teaching  have  been 
expressed  by  him,  in  the  short  passages  which  he  has  devoted 
to  it,  and  in  which  no  one  has  ever  excelled  him." 

For  his  thoughts  on  music  there  is  that  book  to  read  ;  but 
for  Ruskin's  quest  of  music,  for  his  lifelong  attempts  to  qualify 
as  a  musician,  there  is  nothing  to  show.  The  story  has  not  yet 
been  told,  because  it  has  little  bearing  on  his  life's  main  work, 
and — to  put  it  roughly — it  is  the  story  of  a  failure.  Perhaps 
there  are  admirers  who  would  rather  not  know  about  the 
failure  ;  and  yet — you  shall  judge  when  you  have  heard  it ! 

There  are  still  in  existence  the  bound  volumes  of  piano- 
pieces  and  operatic  songs  which  he  learnt  when  he  was  an 
undergraduate  at  Oxford.  One  of  these  volumes  is  open  on 
the  piano,  in  our  photograph  of  the  Brantwood  drawing-room, 


152  RUSKIN    RELICS 

arranged  as  it  used  to  be  when  he  strummed  a  little  before 
dinner  and  read  at  the  four  candles  after  dinner.  Each  piece 
is  inscribed  by  the  Oxford  music-master  with  the  usual  vague 
respect  of  Town  to  Gown  in  the  formula,  "  —  Ruskin,  Esq., 
Ch.Ch."  The  master  does  not  seem  to  have  known  his 
Christian  name,  but  he  evidently  dragged  him  through  a  great 
deal  of  Bellini,  and  Donizetti,  and  Mozart ;  and  "  forty  years 
on — shorter  in  wind,  though  in  memory  long  "  Ruskin  had  a 
keen  recollection  of  these  pieces,  and  liked  to  go  over  them 
with  any  young  friend,  showing  how  they  used  to  sing  "  Non 
piu  andrai "  or  "  Prendero  quel  brunettino,"  with  all  the 
flourishes.  There  are  his  fingering  exercises,  as  elaborately 
annotated  as  all  his  old  books  are  ;  he  must  have  spent  much 
time  and  taken  great  pains,  in  those  early  days,  over  his  music. 
It  was  not  for  want  of  opportunity,  nor  for  lack  of  intention, 
that  he  did  not  become  a  musician. 

When  he  left  Oxford  he  still  continued  his  lessons,  especially 
the  singing.  I  have  never  heard  of  his  singing  in  company, 
but  I  can  hardly  doubt  that  the  lessons  did  much  for  his  voice. 
Any  one  who  has  heard  him  lecture,  or  read,  or  even  talk, 
knows  how  resonant  and  flexible  it  was,  and  how  thoroughly 
under  his  command.  He  had  naturally  a  weak  chest ;  he 
caught  cold  easily,  and  his  throat  was  often  afi^ected  ;  but  he 
always,  I  think,  was  able  to  lecture,  and  his  voice  was  the  first 
thing  that  attracted  an  audience.  The  singing  lessons  were  not 
without  result. 

In  later  years  his  music-master  was  George  Frederick  West, 
who  taught  him — or  tried  to  teach  him — something  of  com- 
position. I  can  remember  Mr.  West  coming  to  give  him  a 
lesson  at  Heme  Hill,  but  I  don't  think  I  was  ever  present  at 
the  ordeal.  You  can  imagine  that  "  Dr.  Ruskin,"  as  Mr. 
West  always  called  him,  was  a  most  difficult  pupil,  wanting  at 
every  turn  to  know  why  ;  incredulous  of  the  best  authority  ; 
impatient  of  the  compromises  and  conventions,  the  "  wohl- 
temperirtes  Klavier  "  ;  and  eager  to  upset  everything  and  start 


or  THE    '^ 

UNIVERSITY 


RUSKIN'S    MUSIC  155 

afresh.  It  Is  Mrs.  Severn  who  can  describe  these  droll  inter- 
views and  Mr.  West's  despairing  appeal,  "But  you  wouldn't 
be  ungrammatical,  Doctor  Ruskin  ?  " 

I  am  not  so  sure  about  that ;  but  Mr.  Ruskin  learnt  what 
he  wanted.  One  thing  he  could  do  to  perfection.  He  could 
easily  and  readily  transpose  and  copy  a  song  that  was  too  high 
or  too  low,  and  he  liked  doing  so.  It  does  not  imply  great 
scholarship,  but  it  is  wonderful,  as  Dr.  Johnson  said  of  the 
performing  dog,  that  he  should  do  it  at  all.  He  might  have 
been  spending  his  time  to  better  purpose,  you  think  ? 

Music  lessons  went  on,  at  all  available  intervals,  down  to 
the  close  of  his  active  life.  At  Sandgate  in  1887-88  he  was 
learning  from  Mr.  Roberts.  In  his  lodgings,  besides  the 
cottage  piano  already  there,  he  got  a  grand  piano  and  a 
harmonium  (the  last  was  afterwards  given  to  a  chapel  in 
Coniston),  and  because  he  had  few  chances  of  hearing  music 
in  that  retirement,  he  engaged  a  young  lady  professional  to 
play  of  evenings  to  himself  and  the  friends  who  were  staying 
with  him. 

In  his  books  there  are  several  hard  hits  at  concerts  and 
concert-goers  ;  but  just  as  he  wrote  against  railways  and  yet, 
he  said,  "used  them  himself,  few  people  more,"  so  he  was  an 
energetic  concert-goer.  On  arriving  at  Paris  or  any  great 
foreign  town  his  first  question  was,  "  What  about  the  opera.''  " 
With  classical  Italian  opera  he  was  familiar  from  his  youth  up. 
He  loved  it,  indignant  when  pestilent  modernism  hurried  the 
tempo  or  took  liberties  with  the  well-known  score.  In  London 
he  usually  had  a  season  ticket  for  the  Crystal  Palace  concerts — 
you  remember  how  he  abused  the  Crystal  Palace  ! — and  when 
he  was  driven  away  by  the  "  autumn  cleaning,"  a  great  business 
in  old  Mrs.  Ruskin's  scrupulous  housekeeping  at  Denmark 
Hill,  he  would  stay  at  the  Queen's  Hotel  in  Norwood,  *'  to  be 
near  the  Manns  concerts." 

He  has  just  mentioned  Charles  Halle  in  "  Ethics  of  the 
Dust,"  but  in  private  letters  comes  out  his  real  admiration  of 


156  RUSKIN    RELICS 

the  great  pianist.  John  Hullah  was  one  of  his  friends  ;  his 
copy  of  Hullah's  "Manual"  is  scribbled  with  devices  for 
simplifying  the  teaching  of  the  keyboard.  Indeed,  being  as 
he  was  a  born  teacher,  and  counting  as  he  did  music  an  essential 
to  education,  he  even  taught — or  tried  to  teach — what  he  knew 
of  it  whenever  there  was  a  chance.  That  class  of  little  country 
girls  at  Brantwood  had  to  learn  music  too  ;  it  was  in  his  time 
of  failing  strength,  and  the  story  is  tragi-comic  ;  but  in  such 
times  the  real  heart  reveals  itself  through  all  weaknesses,  and 
it  was  a  very  kindly  and  earnest  nature  that  made  him  write 
out  neat  cards  of  music-lore  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms  for  the 
cottage  lasses  whose  lives  he  tried  to  raise  and  brighten. 

It  was  only  on  evenings  of  actual  illness  or  serious  trouble 
that  he  passed  the  time  without  music,  and  he  generally 
managed  to  have  somebody  in  the  house  who  could  play  and 
sing.  One  of  his  admirations  was  "  Claribel "  (Mrs.  Barnard), 
whom  he  met  at  Jean  Ingelow's  ;  she  sang  her  own  songs  to 
his  great  delight.  Later,  among  many,  there  were  the  Misses 
Bateman  and  Miss  Wakefield  ;  in  "Joanna's  Care"  he  has  told 
his  readers  about  the  charm  of  Mrs.  Severn's  singing.  And  it 
was  not  only  comic  songs  and  nigger  ballads  that  he  would 
listen  to  ;  he  liked  fun,  as  his  readers  ought  to  know  by  now, 
and  a  good  funny  song,  if  the  tune  was  sound,  made  him  clap 
his  hands  in  a  quaint  gesture  and  laugh  all  over — the  more 
that  there  was  much  sadness  in  his  thoughts.  I  remember 
Sir  Edward  Burne- Jones's  account  of  a  visit  to  the  Christy 
Minstrels  ;  how  the  Professor  dragged  him  there,  to  a  front 
seat,  and  those  burnt-corked  people  anticked  and  shouted,  and 
Burne-Jones  wanted  to  go,  and  Ruskin  wouldn't,  but  sat 
laughing  through  the  whole  performance  as  if  he  loved  it.  An 
afternoon,  to  him,  of  oblivion  to  the  cares  of  life  ;  an  odd 
experience  ;  but  he  would  not  call  it  music.  "  Now  let  us 
have  something  different,"  he  used  to  say  when  he  had  laughed 
enough. 

The  old  songs  were  his  delight,  old  English  and  French 


{Mitt  llargrt€tvts,photogr<^h€r) 

JOHN    RUSKIN    IN    THE    SEVENTIES 

From  a  Bust  by  Professor  B.  Creswick 


RUSKIN'S    MUSIC  159 

and  Scotch.  German  songs,  German  music,  and  everything 
German,  except  DOrer  and  Holbein,  he  could  not  abide ; 
German  love-songs  especially,  "  songs  of  seduction,"  he  called 
them.  He  would  just  endure  a  bit  of  Swiss  carolling,  with  its 
breezy  reminder  of  the  Alps  ;  but  the  unlucky  individual  who 
tried  him  with  Fesca  has  cause  to  remember  the  event.  Haydn 
and  Mozart  he  classed  with  the  Italians,  and  Handel  with  the 
good  old  standards  ;  but  Mendelssohn  was  not  to  be  named. 
"Worst  of  all  he  misliked  execution  without  feeling  :  the  brilliant 
young  lady  pianist  had  no  welcome  from  Ruskin.  Gaiety,  or 
else  tenderness,  appealed ;  even  among  the  old  songs  there 
were  those  he  cast  out  of  the  programme.  Of  "  Charmante 
Gabrielle "  he  said  once,  "  it  might  do  when  a  king  sang 
it." 

Corelli  was  one  of  his  favourite  composers ;  that  was 
another  link  with  "  Redgauntlet  "  and  Wandering  Willie  ;  and 
though  he  was  never  a  collector  of  rarities  as  such,  he  bought 
all  the  Corelli  he  could  meet  with,  as  well  as  various  old 
editions  of  early  music  at  Chappell's  sales. 

From  about  1880  for  some  years  he  took  to  making  little 
compositions  of  his  own  ;  curious  experiments.  It  need  hardly 
be  said,  and  it  need  never  be  regretted,  that  these  were  not  work- 
manlike performances.  The  mere  fact  of  his  trying  to  compose 
is  curious  ;  and  though  it  is  not  part  of  his  life's  work,  it  explains 
some  passages  and  turns  of  his  thought.  It  would  be  really  more 
wonderful  if  he  had  succeeded  in  learning  to  be  a  musician, 
along  with  all  the  other  things  he  attempted.  But  look  at  his 
face,  in  the  truthful  if  not  sentimental  portrait  by  Mr.  Creswick. 
I  do  not  much  believe  in  physiognomy,  and  yet  in  the  faces  of 
those  who  have  the  gift  of  execution — quite  a  separate  power 
from  intellectual  or  emotional  appreciation,  or  even  from  com- 
position— I  think  you  notice  that  the  groove  which  marks  off 
the  wing  of  the  nose,  ala  nasi^  at  the  top  is  strongly  developed  ; 
sometimes  it  is  so  sharp  as  to  be  almost  a  deformity.  There  is 
none  in  Ruskin's  face.    That  trait  may  mean  nothing  ;  but  the 


AT    MARMION'S    GRAVE 

WORDS  BY    SIR   WALTER   SCOTT 
AIR    BY   JOHN    RUSKIN,    1881 


Voice. 


Piano. 


I 


*A 


Andantino  tranquillo. 


wm 


±1 


** 


]^S 


Andantino  tranquillo. 


4  *        * 


*  ■  *  • 


*■  ^^ t?=^ 


^Si 


■^ 


i 


1*1 


a^ 


r      1 


;^=i: 


But         yet 


from  out       the         lit  -  tie  hill 


m=±==a^ 


■^ 


U 


^B 


^g 


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^^ 


^- 


m 


p^^ 


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r      -1 


Ooz  -   as 


the  slen-der  spring  -  let         still, 


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And 


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r^  n 


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■^  '  V  '  -j-  -  -J-'  *  -j-  *  V  *  -^^v'  ^^  -J4*  j 


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:?2: 


s 


ife 


r     '  r 


^^^^  J     1^     I-     1 


^ 


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shep     -     herd  boys  re  -  pair 


To     seek  the    wa    -    ter 


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3a 


1 — r 


"1 — r 


-i — ^ — ^ 


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•1  J-  J     1 


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flag  and  rush,  And  plait     their      gar  •  lands      £air ; 


m 


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— I     m ^- 


^m 


^^ 


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f^      i 


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When  thou         shalt  find  the      lit  -  tie  hill 


P^'^iAi^  ^:lf 


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With  thy  heart        com  -  mune, 


and      be  still. 


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colla  voct. 


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pU. 


Ped. 


*    -o- 


i62  RUSKIN    RELICS 

fact  remains  that  so  able  a  man  spent  time  and  labour  in  vain 
over  an  art  which  many  learn  easily,  without  a  hundredth  part 
of  his  general  power.  In  a  word,  he  had  a  great  love  for  music, 
and  within  certain  limits  a  true  taste,  but  no  talent. 

There  were,  however,  friends  of  his  who  could  find  his  little 
tunes  interesting  and  enjoyable,  and  even  pay  him  pretty  com- 
pliments about  them.  Without  attaching  too  much  importance 
to  it,  I  venture  to  quote  part  of  a  letter  from  Ernest  Chesneau 
(author  of  "  The  English  School  of  Painting ")  to  John 
Ruskin,  dated  "  Oxford,  12  juin,  1884,  8*'-  ^  a.m." 

"  Hier  a  5  heures,  nous  sommes  alles  reclamer  a  miss 
Macdonald  junior  la  chanson  de  notre  John.  L'aimable 
enfant  n'a  pas  eu  le  temps  encore  de  Fecrire  et  me  I'a  promise 
pour  demain  ;  mais  pour  me  consoler  de  ma  deception,  que  son 
fin  regard  de  fillette  a  bien  lue  sur  mon  visage,  elle  m'en  a 
chante  une  autre  ;  et  je  lui  ai  fait  redire  la  premiere.  En 
ecoutant  ces  doux  petits  airs  simples,  naifs  et  touchants,  ma 
memoire  evoquait — sans  que  ma  volont6  y  eut  part — le  souvenir 
d'une  grande  fugue  du  vieux  Bach  que  I'orgue  de  New  College 
avait  fort  bien  joue  la  veille.  Et  ma  pensee  inconsciement 
associait,  rapprochait  la  magnificence  du  Bach  et  la  timide 
ddlicatesse  du  Ruskin.  Et  la  douce  petite  chanson  m'apparais- 
sait  comme  ces  exquises  graminees  dont  la  graine,  apportie 
par  les  oiseaux  du  ciel,  fleurit  aux  frontons  de  marbre  des  palais 
ou  aux  corniches  de  pierre  des  cathedrales.  Et  la  fleurette 
apportee  des  champs  voisins  se  perpetuera  a  travers  les  ages, 
quand  les  somptuosites  cr66es  de  main  d'homme  ne  seront  plus 
que  des  ruines  ou  s'arretera  le  regard  curieux  de  I'artiste. 
C'est  que  la  petite  fleur  des  champs  et  la  naive  chanson 
expriment  I'ame  des  simples  ;  et  que  la  fugue  comme  le  temple 
ou  le  palais  expriment  les  raffinements  des  scholastiques,  c'est  a 
dire  I'ephemere  de  Tart." 

In  "Elements  of  English  Prosody,"  written  1880,  there  is  a 
good  deal  about  his  views  on  music,  made  sadly  unreadable, 
not  by  the  error  of  his  ideas,  but  by  his  perverse  neglect  of 


RUSKIN'S    MUSIC 


163 


recognised  technicalities.      Among   the  rest  is  an  attempt  at 
a  setting  of  "  Ye  Mariners  of  England,"  with  bars  inserted  as 

0 


rjj  \^\  1 1^ 


la^    tt^i^  h^  ,  h^i^ '^'"^^^  i^  ^.^.r- 


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^ 


-f 


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rs 


^^^^^^s 


1  bj  H    ij  r.^^ 


^ 


^ 


P 


"TRUST  THOU  THY  LOVE" 
Facsimile  of  Music  by  John  Ruskin 

if  to  mark  the  feet  of  the  prosody  instead  of  the  beat  of  the 
melody,  which  was  part  of  his  scheme,  though  it  naturally 
offends  a  musician. 

His  little  output  of  musical  composition  need  never  see  the 
light.     Once  he  had  '*  Blow,  blow  thou  winter  wind  "  set  up 


i64  RUSKIN    RELICS 

in  type,  but  it  was  discreetly  blotted.  The  manuscript  page  of 
"  On  Old  ^gina's  Rocks  "  is  in  the  Coniston  Museum  for  the 
curious  to  behold.  Others  were  little  rhymes  for  children — 
the  words  printed  in  his  "  Poems,"  or  fragments  from  Scott 
and  Shakespeare,  "  How  should  I  thy  truelove  know,"  "  From 
Wigton  to  the  foot  of  Ayr,"  "  Come  unto  these  yellow  sands," 
*'  From  the  east  to  western  Ind,"  and  so  forth,  with  a  couple 
of  odes  of  Horace,  "  Faune,  Nympharum "  and  "  Tu  ne 
quaesieris."  Here, "  as  specimens,  it  is  enough  to  give  a  little 
scrap  from  "  Marmion,"  to  which  he  set  the  air  and  sketched 
the  accompaniment  ;  and  his  own  rough  draft  of  a  songlet, 
of  which  the  words,  at  any  rate,  are  lovely,  and  intimately 
Ruskin.  They  might  be  the  motto  to  the  Queen's  Gardens  of 
"  Sesame  "  : 

Trust  thou  thy  Love  ;  if  she  be  proud,  is  she  not  sweet  ? 

Trust  thou  thy  Love  ;  if  she  be  mute,  is  she  not  pure  ? 
Lay  thou  thy  soul  full  in  her  hands,  low  at  her  feet  ; 

Fail,  Sun  and  Breath  ; — yet,  for  thy  peace,  she  shall  endure  ! 


XI 


RUSKIN'S  JEWELS 


XI 
RUSKIN'S   JEWELS 

A  STANDING  treat  for  Ruskin's  visitors  was  to  look  at  minerals. 
Some  people,  it  was  known,  did  not  appreciate  Turners,  but 
everybody  was  sure  to  show  emotion  over  the  diamonds  and 
nuggets.  It  was  not  an  ordinary  collection,  with  a  bit  of  this 
and  a  bit  of  that,  samples  of  all  the  ores  in  the  handbook ;  there 
were  only  certain  sorts,  but  each  specimen  was  the  pick  of  the 
market  and  of  many  years'  selection,  and  every  sort  was  a  type 
of  beauty. 

Ruskin  was  not  a  "scientific"  mineralogist,  though  he 
was  an  F.G.S.  from  an  early  age,  and  used  the  word  "science  " 
pretty  freely  in  his  writings.  He  really  knew  a  great  deal 
about  minerals,  too  ;  but  his  knowledge  was  that  of  the  artist 
and  collector,  taking  little  notice  of  the  mathematics  and 
chemistry  which  you  read  about,  yet  finding  deep  and  keen 
interest  in  the  forms  and  colours,  the  development,  the  "  Life 
of  Stones,"  "  Ethics  of  the  Dust,"  as  he  put  it,  about  which 
science,  up  to  his  time,  had  nothing  to  say.  And  yet,  as  he 
showed  his  collection,  you  could  not  but  feel  that  this  was  a 
kind  of  Nature-study  not  only  fascinating,  but  of  real  import- 
ance. 

A  standard  work,  under  the  heading,  "  Native  Gold,"  tells 
us:  "The  octahedron  and  dodecahedron  are  the  most  common 
forms.  Crystals  sometimes  acicular  .  .  .  also  passing  into 
filiform,  reticulated,  and  arborescent  shapes  ;  and  occasionally 


i68  RUSKIN    RELICS 

spongiform,"  &c.  But  it  does  not  show  yOu,  as  Ruskin  could 
— pulling  out  drawer  after  drawer  of  his  plush-lined  cabinets, 
and  letting  you  handle  and  peer  into  the  dainty  things  with  a 
lens — what  gold,  as  Nature  makes  it,  actually  is.  The  scientific 
book  never  asks  why  some  gold  is  born  in  the  shape  of  tiny, 
solid,  squarish  crystals,  as  truly  crystals  as  the  uncut  diamonds 
lying  beside  them,  or  the  quartz  in  which  they  nestle  ;  or  why 
other  samples  are  spun  into  hair,  or  woven  into  wisps,  or - 
ravelled  into  knots  of  natural  gold  lace  ;  or  again,  why  these 
have  grown  into  the  shape  of  exquisitely  finished  moss,  and 
those  into  seaweed  leaves,  flat  and  curly,  and  powdered  with 
dust  of  gold  crystals,  springing  from  the  rough  brown  stone, 
or  semi-transparent  spar,  inside  of  which  you  can  see  them  like 
flower-stalks  in  water.  Here  is  quite  a  new  world  of  wonder 
and  mystery,  and  that  is  the  kind  of  "  science "  he  puzzled 
over.  Some  more  solid  masses,  not  water-worn  nuggets,  are 
like  a  tiny  netsuke ;  he  had  a  miniature  cobra,  chased  with  its 
scales — all  by  the  art  of  Nature  ;  and  others  so  like  early 
Greek  coins  that  one  might  fancy  they  had  given  suggestions  to 
primitive  mint-misters,  who  like  all  good  artists  modelled  their 
work  on  Nature.  What  a  happy  world,  he  used  to  say,  if  all 
the  gold  were  in  its  native  fronds  ;  and  even  for  jewellery  how 
much  prettier  these  leaves  of  gold  as  it  grew,  than  anything 
the  manufacturing  goldsmith  sells  you.  I  have  drawn  a  group 
of  eight  such  fronds,  arranged  as  a  cross,  the  centre  piece  with 
two  tiny  crystals  of  quartz  naturally  set  into  it,  a  gift  from  his 
collection  to  a  friend,  as  an  instance  of  what  Ruskin  called  a 
jewel  :  and  from  his  own  rapid  sketch  in  colour  (over  leaf)  is  a 
knot  of  natural  silver  wire,  for  silver,  too,  has  its  "  arborescent 
filiform  "  shapes. 

After  gold  and  silver  and  diamonds  you  might  think  the 
interest  of  the  mineral-drawers  would  begin  to  wane.  But  no! 
we  come  to  richer  colours  and  still  more  striking  forms.  This 
big  pebble,  rosy  pink,  with  hazy  streaks  inside  which  catch  the 
light  as  you  turn  it  about,  and  reveal  mysterious  inner  archi- 


RUSKIN'S    JEWELS 


169 


tecture — that  is  a  ruby  ;  and  this  also,  a  bit  of  frozen 
raspberry  jam  engraved  with  mystic  triangles,  one  inside 
another  like  a  dwarf-wrought  seal  of  a  fairy  king.  Then  hold 
up  this  slab  of  talc  to  the  light ;  the  dark  patch  in  it  glows 
like  a  red  lamp  with  the  intense  colour  of  the  garnet.  Lower 
down  the  cabinet  there  are  bunches  of  beryls,  angelica  stalks 
Queen  Thyri  would  not  have  scorned  ;  or  trimmed  by  Nature 
into  quaint  likeness  to  those  six-sided  Austrian  pencils,  point 


GOLD    AS    IT    GROWS 
(Actual  Size) 

and  all  :  emeralds  in  short  and  snapped-ofF  sticks  of  mossy 
green  ;  pale  pink  rods  of  tourmaline  ;  clippings  of  a  baby's 
hair,  but  crimson,  and  so  fragile  you  must  not  breathe  on  them 
— that  is  ruby  copper,  chalcotrichite  ;  black  needles  of  rutile 
piercing  through  and  through  the  solid,  glassy  quartz-crystals  ; 
amianthus,  plush  on  a  stone,  tow  on  a  distaff,  waving  seaweed 
in  a  motionless  aquarium  of  hard  spar.  Why  were  these 
dainty  things  created,  or  how  did  they  grow,  hidden  away  from 
all  possible  light  for  their  colours  to  develop  or  sight  of 
man  to  enjoy  them,  until  mining  folk  dug  them  up  from 
their  lurking-places  .''  And  then  there  are  those  which  even 
when  found  show  little  of  their  beauty  until  they  are  polished  ; 


lyo 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


agates,  and  Labrador  spar,  and  malachites,  and  fire  opals  ; 
what  theory  of  Nature  accounts  for  this  latent  loveliness  ?  he 
would  say ;    how  little  this   kind   of  beauty   is   known    and 


NATIVE    SILVER 
By  John  Ruskin 


enjoyed  by  people  who  are  satisfied  with  jewellery  from  the 
price-list  !  One  of  his  plans  was  to  form  a  jewel-museum  in 
which  the  curator  should  exhibit,  with  lens  and  leisurely 
explanations,  such  treasures  to  admiring  groups  of  visitors. 
The  place,  indeed,  was  fixed,  at  Keswick  ;  the  curator  named. 
But  the  curator  designate  shirked  the  too  responsible  honour. 


'.vJ 


FACSIMILK   01     A    \\\(.V:    FROM    MINKRAI.   CATALOGUE 
By  John  RuskinJ (about  183 i) 


^f>..    or 


'<Li^o 


RNii 


RUSKIN'S    JEWELS  173 

Less  for  pure  beauty  but  still  wonderful  were  all  the  many 
forms  of  chalcedony  and  kindred  minerals  toward  the  end  of 
his  entertainment.  One  is  a  specimen  of  hyalite — a  sort  of  ropy, 
waxy  glass-bubble  holding  water  inside.  He  would  tell  how  he 
wanted  to  know  why  the  water  was  in  it,  and  what  sort  of 
mysterious  liquid  was  so  sealed  up  and  treasured  by  the  powers 
that  be  ;  so  he  had  it  carefully  sawn  asunder  and  the  sacred 
ichor  collected  and  analysed.  It  turned  out  to  be  just  like 
Thames  water. 

The  page  photographed  from  one  of  his  earliest  writings — 
the  mineral  dictionary  he  made  at  ten  or  eleven  in  a  shorthand 
which,  later  on,  he  could  not  read  himself — is  now  in  the 
Coniston  Museum.  It  shows  his  very  early  interest  and 
diligence,  at  the  time  when  he  cared  nothing  for  pictures  or 
political  economy,  but  loved  Nature  in  all  her  ways.  This 
page  begins  his  juvenile  account  of  Galena,  a  word  which  in 
later  days  often  brought  out  a  smile  and  a  story.  For  years, 
he  said,  he  was  wretched  because  his  great  and  glorious 
specimen  of  this  same  Lead  Glance  had  a  flaw  in  it,  an  angular 
notch,  breaking  the  dainty  exactitude  of  the  big,  black,  shining 
crystal,  otherwise  as  regular  as  the  most  consummate  art  could 
plane  and  polish  it.  One  day,  with  the  lens,  he  noticed  that 
the  form  of  the  notch  corresponded  with  the  shape  of  a  crystal 
of  calcite  embedded  in  another  specimen.  His  galena  had  not 
been  damaged  ;  it  was  Nature's  work,  all  the  more  wonderful 
now  ;  and  life  was  still  worth  living. 

Few  Ruskin  readers  know  his  papers  on  Agates  in  back 
numbers  of  the  Geological  Magazine^  with  their  fine  coloured 
plates  illustrating  some  of  the  best  in  his  grand  series ;  but  this 
was  one  of  his  pet  studies,  and  it  was  a  great  regret  of  his 
declining  age  that  he  had  never  carried  it  through.  By  careful 
drawing  he  learned,  as  any  one  must,  far  more  of  the  secrets  of 
agate-structure  than  can  be  found  by  merely  looking  and 
talking,  and  he  thought  that  the  usual  explanation  was  quite 
insufficient ;  agates  were  not  made  in  layers  poured  one  after 


1 74 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


another  into  the  hollows  of  the  rock,  but  by  some  kind  of 
"segregation,"  the  withdrawal  of  different  materials  from  a 
mixed  mass.  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  his  theory  ;  but 
only  to  note  that  duplicates  of  his  own  set,  in  illustration  of  his 


c--S^-«//t 


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C^--^^ 


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BIT  OF  A   LETTER  WITH   SKETCH   OF   SNOW  CRYSTALS 
By  John  Ruskin 

papers,  are  now  in  the  Coniston   Museum,  which  indeed  was 
founded  by  his  gift  of  a  general  mineral  collection  in  1887. 

His  "  Catalogue  of  a  series  of  specimens  in  the  British 
Museum  (Natural  History)  illustrative  of  the  more  common 
forms  of  Native  Silica"  (George  Allen,  1884)  to  a  certain 
extent  suggests  his  agate  theory.  This  is  well  worth  looking 
through  when  a  visit  to  the  Museum  gives  the  reader  an 
opportunity  of  comparing  these  beautiful  stones,  many  of  them 


RUSKIN'S    JEWELS  175 

presented  by  Ruskin,  who  also  gave  the  great  jewels  he  called 
the  Colenso  diamond  and  the  Edwardes  ruby  (after  his  friend  Sir 
Herbert  Edwardes,  whose  life  he  wrote  in  "  A  Knight's  Faith  "). 
Another  printed  catalogue,  running  to  fifty  pages,  was 
written  to  expound  a  collection  given  to  St.  David's  School, 
Reigate  (the  Rev.  W.  H,  Churchill's,  now  at  Stonehouse, 
Broadstairs)  in  1883.     A  third  collection,  similarly  catalogued, 


DIAMOND   DIAGRAM 
By  John  Ruskin 

was  given  to  Kircudbright  Museum,  and  others  to  Whitelands 
College,  Chelsea,  and  the  St.  George's  (now  called  the  Ruskin) 
Museum,  Sheffield.  These  do  not  exhaust  the  list  of  his  gifts, 
but  serve  to  show  how  eager  he  was  to  share  his  interests  with 
boys  and  girls,  working  men  and  the  big  public,  who  must 
surely,  he  thought,  love  these  phases  of  Nature's  beauty  when 
they  had  opportunity  of  seeing  them. 

After  the  illness  of  1878  which  set  him  aside  from  Oxford 
work,  he  took  to  stones  of  all  sorts  with  ardour.  Even  at 
Oxford  he  had  not  quite  forgotten  them  :  the  lecture  called 
"The  Iris  of  the  Earth"  (given  in  London,  February  1876) 
is  a  poetical  miscellany  of  jewel- lore.    While  he  was  at  work  on 


176  RUSKIN    RELICS 

this  at  Oxford  he  sent  the  college  messenger  round  with  a  press- 
ing note  for  one  of  his  pupils  to  come  at  once,     *'  I  want  to 

know  what  gules  means.     Run  to  Professor and  Professor 

and  find  out.     The  books  say  it  means  gueule,  the  red  of 

a  wild  beast's  throat,  but  that  is  too  nasty."  "Why  not  gul  ? 
I  think  that  is  Persian  for  rose,''  said  the  pupil.  "  Wonderful !" 
said  he  ;  "  In  the  gardens  of  Gul !  Of  course  !  "  And  down  it 
went  in  the  lecture. 

At  Brantwood  in  the  early  'eighties  there  was  a  busy  time 
with  minerals.  He  was  trying  to  get  deeper  into  the  secret, 
and  to  look  up  the  more  scientific  side  of  the  question.  He 
even  got  a  microscope,  and  his  secretary  had  to  make  drawings 
of  diamond  anatomy,  which  I  am  afraid  only  confirmed  him  in 
his  distrust  of  microscopes.  He  pored  over  crystallography, 
and  tried  to  rub  up  his  mathematics,  only  to  find  that  nothing 
of  the  sort  explained  why  gold  made  itself  into  fronds,  and 
snow  mto  stars,  and  diamonds  into  marvellous  domes  built  up 
of  shield  within  shield,  round-sided  triangles — not  round-sided 
after  all,  but  mysteriously  straight  lines,  simulating  curves,  and 
so  blended  and  harmonised  and  perfected  that  a  good  uncut 
diamond  is  perhaps  the  most  bewilderingly  beautiful  thing  in 
Nature.  Here  is  one  of  his  sketches  giving  a  diagram  of  the 
big  "  St.  George's  "  diamond  he  bought  for  ;^iooo,  and  studied, 
and  made  his  secretary  study,  for  weeks  together.  It  ought 
perhaps  to  be  said  that  the  diagram  represents  only  one  facet, 
and  that  this  is  magnified  fully  two  diameters  ;  the  diamond  is 
large,  but  not  so  large  as  all  that.  I  cannot  reproduce  the  best 
drawing  made  at  the  time,  too  elaborate  in  its  attempt  at  trans- 
parency and  detail  ;  "  That  style  of  drawing  was  too  utter  by 
far,"  he  said  ;  but  his  diagram  may  give  some  hint  of  the  reason 
why  he  preached  *'  uncut  diamonds  "  as  well  as  the  jewellery  of 
native  orold. 

He  put  his  theory  into  practice  more  than  once  ;  especially 
in  a  fine  pendant  he  gave  to  Mrs.  Severn,  who  designed  the 
setting.       It  is  about  two  and  three-quarter  inches  long,  not 


RUSKIN'S    JEWELS  177 

including  the  clasp.  Two  large  moonstones  en  cabochon  but 
irregular  in  outline  are  set  in  an  arrangement  of  gold  leaves  and 
twigs  ;  among  them  are  nine  spikes  of  uncut  sapphire  each 
about  half  an  inch  long,  radiating  from  the  moonstones,  which 
are  joined  by  two  uncut  diamonds,  one  round  and  one  tri- 
angular ;  a  quantity  of  small  rubies  are  dotted  about  the  group 
to  give  contrast  of  colour.  The  effect  is  most  picturesque,  but 
of  course  it  has  not  the  glitter — the  vulgar  glitter,  Ruskin  called 
it — of  ordinary  jewellery.  To  see  the  special  charm  you  have 
to  look  close. 

A  much  more  entertaining  and  to  him  satisfactory  line  of 
research  was  in  finding  illustrations  of  crystal  form  and  banded 
structure  among  the  stones  of  the  neighbourhood,  with  which 
his  porch  became  encumbered,  or  in  sugar  and  salt  and  coloured 
pastry,  or  tracing  the  diffusion  of  cream  in  fruit-juice,  which 
makes  a  temporary  agate.  It  was  more  fun  for  the  secretary 
too,  than  working  problems  in  the  kitchen  after  bedtime,  the 
only  chance  for  a  smoke  ;  and  who  can  tackle  geometry  of  three 
dimensions  without  a  pipe .''  If  Ruskin  had  smoked  he  might 
have  mastered  his  Miller  and  Cloiseaux  ;  but  it  was  better 
that  he  should  satisfy  himself  that  their  ways  were  not 
his  ways.  The  poetry  of  jewel-lore  can't  be  stated  in  terms 
■o^h.  k.  I 

Those  pie-crust  experiments  were  everybody's  delight. 
They  are  partly  told  in  "  Deucalion,"  illustrated  with  drawings 
by  Laurence  Hilliard,  who  became  expert  at  bogus  mineralogy 
on  his  own  account.  After  displays  of  nature's  wonders  and 
Ruskin's  eloquence,  the  visitor  at  luncheon  or  tea  (tea  was  at  the 
dining-room  table)  often  did  not  know  whether  to  laugh  or 
look  shocked  when  Laurie  made  minerals  of  bread  and  jam, 
or  anything  handy,  irresistibly  like ;  and  described  them  gravely 
in  the  very  accents  of  the  Professor,  who  found  it  "entirely 
lovely,"  and  sometimes  even  suggestive.  He  was  always  look- 
ing out  for  analogies,  and  could  make  bogus  minerals  too.  One 
<iay,  showing  his  jewels  to  a  very  young  lady,  he  brought  out  of 

M 


178  RUSKIN    RELICS 

its  purple  plush  nook  in  the  glittering  drawer  a  wonderful 
specimen,  ropy,  arborescent,  semi-transparent,  lustrous;  descant- 
ing the  while  on  stalactitic  growth,  chalcedony,  chrysoprase, 
hyalite.  "  And  what  is  this  called  ?  "  she  asked.  "  Wax,  my 
dear  ;  I  got  it  at  the  candle  myself." 


XII 


RUSKIN'S    LIBRARY 


XII 
RUSKIN'S    LIBRARY 


In  any  strange  house,  while  you  wait  for  your  host  or  hostess, 
how  much  you  gather  of  their  tastes  and  ways  from  the  books 
on  the  table  and  in  the  shelves  !  You  cannot  help  noticing 
either  the  presence  or  the  absence  of  literature,  and  you  do  not 
need  to  open  the  volumes  to  guess  what  sort  of  reading  the 
good  people  like.  Well-known  bindings  and  styles  of  binding 
betray  them  at  once ;  and  unless  they  are  abnormally  tidy  their 
pet  books  are  sure  to  be  somewhere  in  the  room  they  use.  Of 
course,  one  must  discount  the  evidence  of  a  cover  which  too 
obviously  matches  the  furniture ;  and  if  you  are  an  author,  and 
expected  to  call,  be  not  too  lifted  up  on  spying  your  own  book 
gracefully  displayed.  You  may  assume  that  working  books, 
professional  tools,  are  in  the  workshop  ;  and  there  are  few 
houses  without  a  certain  litter  of  ephemeral  printing,  magazines 
and  library  volumes,  necessary  for  intelligent  conversation. 
But  if  the  people  read,  you  will  soon  know  it,  and  learn  at  a 
glance  much  about  their  tastes  and  characters. 

When  you  know  your  friends  well  enough  to  browse 
among  their  books  you  learn  still  more.  The  way  they  cut 
their  pages,  skipping  or  plodding  ;  and  if  they  ever  do  scribble 
on  the  margins,  what  they  have  marked  ;  and  which  books  are 
much  used,  and  which  are  exiled  to  top  shelves  ;  and  how  they 
are  kept — unbound,  or   perhaps  all    too   beautifully    bound  ; 


i82  RUSKIN    RELICS 

these  things  tell  you  more  than  an  autobiography  would,  more 
than  many  years  of  ordinary  acquaintance. 

Ruskin's  library  was  scattered  all  over  his  house — and 
though  he  has  been  dead  these  three  years,  and  for  many  years 
earlier  made  little  use  of  his  books,  the  bulk  of  them  still 
remain  pretty  much  as  he  left  them.  At  one  time,  when  he 
was  busy  upon  literary  work,  he  was  continually  buying,  and 
every  corner  was  heaped  with  new  purchases  and  old  lots  weeded 
out  to  be  given  away  or  sold  ;  but  the  net  result  of  his  choice 
and  taste,  what  he  personally  cared  for  and  kept,  can  be  seen  by 
a  visitor  at  Brantwood — the  books  for  constant  use  in  the 
study,  and  favourite  reading  in  his  bedroom,  and  the  rest  dis- 
persed about  the  place.  Most  of  these  books  I  remember  in 
just  these  same  places  twenty-five  years  ago,  or  more ;  so  that 
in  taking  you  into  his  study  I  am  showing  you  the  workshop 
where  he  wrote  *'  Oxford  Lectures  "  and  *'  Fors  Clavigera,"  and 
handling  the  tools  he  used. 

Art  and  Political  Economy  were  the  main  subjects  of  those 
lectures  and  letters,  and  I  suppose  the  public  assumes  that  these 
were  the  subjects  most  interesting  to  him.  Whether  you  are  of 
those  who  think  him  great  on  Art  but  astray  on  Economics,  or 
of  the  later  school  who  have  resolved  that  he  never  knew  any- 
thing of  Art,  but  had  real  insight  and  foresight  in  matters 
social  and  political,  you  would  expect  to  find  evidences  of 
both — rows  of  reference  volumes,  and  all  the  standard  works. 
But  they  are  not  here  ;  Art  and  Political  Economy  are  con- 
spicuous by  their  absence. 

Perhaps  you  will  query  my  sweeping  statement  as  you  take 
down  a  volume  of  Crowe  and  Cavalcaselle  from  the  '*  history 
bookcase  "  to  the  right  of  the  fireplace  :  but  see,  it  is  only  a 
stray  volume ! — and  open  it  ;  only  a  few  pages  are  cut,  and 
those  considerably  bescribbled  with  dissent.  Ought  he  to  have 
known  by  heart  these  authorities  on  Italian  painting }  It  might 
have  saved  him  from  an  error  or  two,  and  from  some  useless 
discussions;    but   he    knew  the    pictures    themselves,   and    his 


RUSKIN'S    LIBRARY  183 

business  was  not  to  write  handbooks,  but  to  bring  his  readers 
directly  into  touch  with  the  generalised  human  view  he  took  of 
painting.  There  is,  however,  the  "  Dictionnaire  de  I'Architec- 
ture  "  of  Viollet-le-Duc,  much  used  in  parts,  for  he  alternately 
admired  the  research  and  quarrelled  with  the  conclusions  of  the 
great  French  architect,  whose  name  he  persisted  in  spelling 
"  Violet."  There  are  some  very  successful  artists  whose  per- 
spective is  always  wrong  ;  and  others  whose  drawing  can  always 
be  corrected  by  an  art  student  ;  but  they  can  paint  pictures ! 
Ruskin's  work  is  full  of  little  faults  ;  de  minimis  non  curat ; 
but  he  got  at  the  root  of  the  matter,  mostly,  and  he  could 
make  you  see  it.  All  the  tinkering  criticism  about  his  mistakes 
only  shows  that  he  thought  *'  first-hand,"  so  to  say,  and  wrote 
with  a  full  pen. 

This  bookcase  is  chiefly  made  up  of  Carlyle,  Gibbon,  Alison, 
Milman,  and  the  old  standards,  of  course  thickly  annotated. 
There  are  also  some  volumes  of  Mr.  W.  S.  Lilly,  but  you 
may  open  them  and  find  no  sign  of  life  ;  Ruskin  may  have 
read  but  he  has  not  marked.  There  is  his  old  copy  of  Lord 
Lindsay's  "Christian  Art"  (1847),  reviewed  by  him  in  the 
June  Quarterly  of  that  year.  It  is  stamped  with  "  Mr. 
Murray's  compliments,"  but  that  must  refer  to  the  previous 
owner.  You  see  his  name  in  queer  cramped  pencil  **  Burgon  : 
Oriel,"  with  Greek  e — Burgon  of  the  Greek  vase,  the  High 
Churchman,  whose  dark  thin  face  and  bright  eyes,  and  humorous 
contempt  for  all  *'  doxies "  but  his  own,  make  him  so  well 
remembered  by  Oxford  men  of  the  passing  generation.  There 
is  something  odd  in  Ruskin's  early  excursion  into  primitive 
Italian  art  being,  as  it  were,  "  vice  Burgon,  resigned."  Then 
there  is  "  Roman  Antiquities,"  by  Alexander  Adam,  LL.D., 
18 19,  doubly  ear-marked  by  "John  J.  Ruskin,"  and  kept  for 
his  father's  sake,  and  for  the  sake  of  his  father's  old  school- 
master. Ruskin,  at  all  times,  was  open  to  the  appeal  of 
associations  ;  all  his  judgments  about  men,  women  and  things 
muse   be   corrected    by   the    personal   equation,  and  without 


184  RUSKIN    RELICS 

his    biography    one    can    never    quite    rightly   appraise    his 
works. 

The  "  Bible  of  Amiens  "  and  some  passages  in  the  latest 
lectures  hint  that  he  was  really  interested  in  Anglo-Saxons  and 
Irish  Saints.  There  is  the  Venerable  Bede,  evidently  studied, 
and  the  life  of  St.  Patrick — you  know  he  was  always  respectful 
to  the  patron  of  Ireland — but  not  a  leaf  cut  !  There  is  J.  R. 
Green's  "  Making  of  England,"  appreciatively  annotated,  and 
Sharon  Turner,  much  marked  and  cut  down  in  a  reckless  way 
to  fit  the  shelf.  A  much  worse  example  of  this  chopping  of 
books  is  Westwood's  "  Miniatures  and  Ornaments  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  Irish  MSS.,"  a  most  valuable  folio,  from  which 
Ruskin  has  sawn  the  top  edge  and  ripped  out  all  the  best  plates. 
As  in  the  case  of  his  mediaeval  missals,  scribbled  on  the  margin 
by  his  irreverent  pen,  he  would  say  that  his  books  were  for 
use  and  not  for  curiosities.  These  plates  were  ripped  out,  not 
for  wanton  mischief  or  in  vulgar  carelessness,  but  to  show  to 
his  classes  at  lectures.  The  margins  were  cut,  so  that  the  books 
might  be  put  away  in  shelves  or  cabinets,  clearing  the  workshop 
of  a  busy  m.an,  instead  of  leaving  them  about  to  be  mishandled 
and  dog-eared  ;  for  the  best  of  housemaids  cannot  be  expected 
always  to  treat  the  master's  litter  as  if  they  loved  it.  None  of 
these  volumes  are  so  damaged  that  a  little  vamping  would  not 
set  them  right ;  though  of  course  they  would  not  be  the  tall 
copies  prized  by  bibliomaniacs.  But  how  many  of  these  tall 
copies  are  read  by  their  buyers  ? 

On  the  other  hand  he  bound  some  volumes  much  more 
sumptuously  than  they  deserved.  On  this  shelf  there  is  a  very 
splendid  tome,  lettered  on  the  back  "Swisse  Histor.,"  evidently 
bound  abroad,  which  on  opening  you  find  to  be  Gaullieur's 
**  La  Suisse  Historique,"  much  used  for  intended  work  on  Swiss 
towns  ;  and  another  grand,  thick,  bevelled,  gilded,  crushed- 
morocco  series  lettered  *'  Hephaestus,"  which  turns  out 
to  be  "  Les  Ouvriers  des  Deux  Mondes  "  (Paris,  1857) — the 
only  sample  we   can  find  of  the  Political  Economy  we  were 


{Mitt  Brickkill,  ^kotogmpktr) 
RUSKIN'S  SWISS  FIGURE 


TTsrT 


.  r..    or 


RUSKIN*S    LIBRARY  187 

looking  ]for.     Nor  is  there  anything  of  the  sort  elsewhere  in 
the  room. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  fireplace  is  a  nest  of  shelves  filling 
the  corner  ;  you  see  it  in  the  picture  of  Ruskin's  study,  above 
his  armchair.  These  shelves  are  full  of  maps  and  scraps, 
presented  poems  at  the  top  and  other  gleanings  awaiting 
removal  when  he  should  next  put  his  room  in  order ;  old 
Baedekers  and  chess-books  lower  down,  with  the  set  of  chessmen 
and  the  little  travelling  board.%andy  for  a  game  after  tea  ;  and 
boxes  filled  with  the  British  Museum  reproductions  of  those 
bonny  Greek  coins,  thick,  rich  and  bossy,  like  nuggets  come 
to  life  or  fossils  in  metal. 

Over  the  fire  are  no  books,  but,  as  many  pictures  of  the 
Brantwood  study  have  shown,  a  della  Robbia  relief,  replacing 
the  Turner  which  once  hung  there  ;  and  the  stuffed  kingfisher, 
Cyprus  pottery  and  figurines,  a  bit  or  two  of  colour  in  Japanese 
enamel  and  Broseley  lustre,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  mantel- 
piece the  Swiss  girl  which  we  have  photographed.  It  is  a  brown 
old  wood-carving,  nearly  a  foot  high,  with  the  vineyard  pruning- 
hook  (now  broken  away)  and  the  hotie  or  creel  full  of  vine-leaves 
(they  use  the  word  hot  for  a  pannier  or  creel  in  the  Cumberland 
dialect  also) ;  and  though  the  drapery  is  commonplace — kerchief, 
corset  and  skirt — there  is  something  of  the  fine  school  of 
sculpture  about  the  lines,  not  unworthy  of  a  good  Nuremberg 
bronze.  I  do  not  know  how  or  whence  this  figure  came  to  the 
family,  but  it  was  old  Mrs.  Ruskin's  before  it  was  brought 
to  Brantwood,  and  here  it  is,  so  to  say,  the  very  centrepiece  of 
the  house.  When  he  sat  writing  at  his  usual  place  and  looked 
up,  his  eye  would  light  on  it  first  of  all,  before  rising  to  the 
Florentine  Madonna  above  or  wandering  to  the  Turners  on 
the  wall  to  the  right,  or  out  of  window  to  the  lake  and  moun- 
tains and  Coniston  Old  Hall  opposite.  What  has  he  not  said 
about  the  beauty  of  the  peasant-girl  in  the  fields  as  compared 
with  the  proud  ideals  of  classic  art  ? — that  the  painting  we 
most  need  is  to  paint  cheeks  red  with  health,  and  so  on  } 


i88  RUSKIN    RELICS 

Here  was  always  the  reminder  of  that  bedrock  principle  of 
his  thought.  You  know  how  George  Borrow  describes  a 
writer  who  used  to  find  his  inspiration  in  a  queer  portrait  over 
the  fireplace  ?  This,  I  think — though  I  never  heard  Ruskin 
say  so,  and  perhaps  it  is  rather  the  symbol  than  the  cause — 
gives  us  the  keynote  of  his  study  and  the  work  that  went  on 
in  it. 

The  rest  of  his  library  represents  not  so  much  his  professed 
occupation  as  what  you  might  call  his  hobbies.  To  the  left, 
within  reach  of  the  writing-table,  all  is  Botany,  and  not  very 
modern  botany  either.  Beyond  the  cases  full  of  Turners  in 
sliding  frames,  and  drawers  of  business  papers,  all  is  Geology 
and  Natural  History,  mostly  out  of  date,  or  shall  we  call  it 
"classical"  ?  There  is  Mineralogy,  old  Jameson,  and  Cloiseaux, 
gorgeously  bound,  and  Miller,  and  perhaps  a  larger  number 
of  the  handbook  class,  in  French  and  English,  and  of  more 
modern  date,  than  in  any  other  department.  There  are  his  old 
friends  Forbes  and  Phillips  on  glaciers  and  geology,  and  some 
more  recent  three-volume  treatises  with  uncomplimentary 
scribblings  on  their  margins.  There  is  Yarrell's  "  Birds  " — he 
never  could  endure  the  cuts  ;  and  three  sets  of  Bewick.  One  of 
the  most  used  is  Donovan's  "  British  Insects,"  eight  volumes, 
with  coloured  plates. 

Opposite  you  find  more  botany  ;  the  nineteen  massive  folios 
of  "  Florae  Danicas  Descriptio,"  the  twenty-seven  volumes  of 
the  old,  old  Botanical  Magazine^  with  the  beautiful  plates  of 
Sowerby,  the  three  dozen  volumes  and  index  of  Sowerby's 
*'  English  Botany,"  the  six  volumes  of  Baxter's  "  Island  Plants," 
the  nine  volumes  of  Lecoq's  "  Geographie  Botanique,"  and  so 
forth;  all  showing  his  purely  artistic  and  "unscientific" 
interest  in  natural  history.  Modern  anatomy  and  evolution 
were  nothing  to  him  ;  what  he  cared  about  was  the  beauty  of 
the  creatures  and  the  sentiments  that  clustered  round  them  in 
mythology  and  poetry. 

Of  poetry  and  belles-lettres  he  had  a  great  assortment,  as 


RUSKIN'S    LIBRARY 


189 


might  be  expected,  and  mostly  in  volumes  interesting  for  their 
history,  though  not  chosen  as  rare  editions.  He  kept  his 
grandfather's  "  Burns,"  his  father's  "  Byron,"  his  own  college 
**  Aristophanes,"  with  copious  lecture-notes  and  sketches  of  the 
Poetry  of  Architecture   in   blank  spaces.      He  had  Morris's 


{Miss  Hargreaves,  photographer) 
TWO  BOOKS  OF  RUSKIN'S— A   "NUREMBERG  CHRONICLE"  AND 
HIS   POCKET   "HORACE" 


**  Earthly  Paradise,"  "  from  his  friend  the  author "  ;  a 
"  Linnaeus "  that  had  belonged  to  Ray,  the  great  Cumbrian 
botanist ;  "  A  Dyaloge  of  Syr  Thomas  More  Knyghte  "  (i  530), 
with  the  neat  autograph,  "  ffrancis  Bacons  booke,"  apparently 
that  of  the  famous  Lord  Bacon  ;  and,  of  course,  his  Scott 
manuscripts  have  been  often  described  by  visitors  to  Brantwood. 
One  little  token  of  unexpected  reverence  for  a  name  which 
hasty  readers  might  think  was  not  to  be  spoken  in  Ruskin's 


I90  RUSKIN    RELICS 

study,  is  a  tiny  duodecimo  in  yellow  silk — "  Dialogo  di  Antonio 
Manetti,"  about  the  size,  form,  and  measurements  of  Dante's 
Hell — inscribed  apparently  by  the  great  artist  "  di  Michelagnol 
Buonarroti." 

Greek  authors,  and  a  few  translations  like  Jowett's 
*'  Plato,"  ;  Missals  and  Bibles  in  mediaeval  Greek  and  Latin  ; 
a  few  old  printed  books — "  Danthe  "  (1491),  and  a  couple 
more  *'  fourteeners  " — but  only  on  subjects  in  which  he  was 
interested,  such  as  heraldry — Randle  Holmes  (1688),  and 
Guillim  (1638),  coloured  by  Ruskin  and  much  marked; 
Douglas's  "Virgil"  (1553),  Chapman's  "Homer,"  the  original 
"Cowley"  of  1668,  various  copies  of  "  Poliphilo,"  together 
with  standard  poets,  complete  what  may  be  called  the  bric-a- 
brac  of  the  shelves  above  the  mineral  collection.  Some  readers 
of  Omar  Khayyam  may  be  interested  in  his  dissent  to  stanza 
34,  and  energetic  assent  to  21,  25,  45  and  46,  scored  on  the 
margins  in  the  edition  of  1879;  and  some  of  his  artistic 
readers,  will  they  be  sympathetic  or  scandalised  at  his  collection 
of  Rodolph  ToepfFer's  Genevese  caricatures  ?  There  is  very 
little  about  Art  in  all  these  lines  of  books :  Millingen's 
"  Greek  Vases,"  and  the  still  greater  work  of  Lenormant  and 
De  Witte  are  there  indeed,  but  the  only  other  art  books  are 
those  of  two  old  friends,  Prout's  "  Sketches  at  Home  and 
Abroad,"  and  Harding's  "  Elementary  Art." 

Some  of  the  books  he  used  for  special  work  are  in  other 
parts  of  the  house,  and  many  must  have  been  sold  or  given 
away  when  they  were  done  with.  A  number  of  those  he  gave 
away  are  in  a  case  at  the  Coniston  Museum,  from  which  we 
photograph  a  fine  Nuremberg  Chronicle  side  by  side  with  the 
tiny  "  Horace "  he  used  to  carry  in  his  pocket  on  journeys 
abroad.  In  his  bedroom  he  kept  a  great  deal  of  favourite 
reading  for  wakeful  nights — Carlyle  and  Helps,  Scott  and 
Byron,  Shakespeare  and  Spenser,  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Madame 
de  Genlis,  and  the  books  of  his  youth,  a  most  curious  collection 
of  dingy  antiquity,  with  not  a  few  French  novels  :  and  else- 


RUSKIN'S    LIBRARY  191 

where  are  the  ponderous  tomes  from  which  he  gleaned.  His 
work  was  not  done  without  much  reference  to  books ;  but, 
after  all,  it  was  never  compilation.  Perhaps  it  is  a  truism,  but 
this  look  round  Ruskin's  library  gives  it  some  freshness  and 
force — that  the  writing  which  makes  its  mark  in  the  world  is 
not  the  second-hand,  patchwork  sort,  however  laborious  and 
however  learned.  He  looked  at  Nature,  and  wrote  down  what 
he  saw  ;  he  felt  deeply,  and  wrote  what  he  felt. 


XIII 

RUSKIN'S    BIBLES 


N 


XIII 

RUSKIN'S    BIBLES 


"  RusKiN  ET  LA  BIBLE  "— 7-who  would  havc expccted  it? — is  the 
title  of  a  French  book,  written  by  a  science  professor,  and 
published  in  Paris. 

We  all  know  that  his  works,  from  "  Modern  Painters  "  to 
"  Prasterita,"  are  full  of  the  Bible.  Sometimes  his  allusions 
and  quotations  are  merely  ornamental,  and  sometimes  his 
remarks  are  sharp  enough  to  pain  the  reader  ;  for  Ruskin  went 
through  many  phases  of  faith,  or,  rather,  through  a  long  period 
of  doubt,  from  which  he  came,  in  his  later  years,  into  a  new 
and  very  simple  acceptance  of  the  Christian  hope.  But  at  all 
times  he  took  the  Bible  seriously,  and  in  many  a  passage  he  has 
made  its  thoughts  and  stories  live  for  us  with  marvellous  reality. 
Hear  him  tell  the  Death  of  Moses  or  the  Call  of  Peter  in  those 
well-known  pages  of  his  masterpiece,  or  follow  him  in  **  Fors  '* 
through  unpalatable  deductions  from  neglected  commands,  and 
you  cannot  but  feel  that  he  was  a  great  preacher,  "  a  man  of  one 
book,"  and  that  book  was  the  Bible. 

How  he  was  brought  up  upon  it  he  tells  us  in  his  autobi- 
ography. In  Coniston  Museum  not  the  least  interesting  of  the 
Ruskin  relics  is  the  Bible  from  which,  as  he  noted  on  the  fly- 
leaf, his  mother  taught  him  the  paraphrases.  Turning  it  over 
one  sees  how  the  parts  he  has  named  as  especially  studied, 
Psalm  cxix.  above  all,  have  been  soiled  ;  for  even  little  John 
Ruskin,  model  of  home-bred  boys,  was  like  Tommy  Grimes 


196  RUSKIN    RELICS 

the  scamp — he  couldn't  always  be  good — and  continual  thumb- 
ing embrowns  the  page. 

It  was  his  mother  to  whom  he  owed  this  youthful  training  in 
a  close  knowledge  of  the  text,  "  without  note  or  comment." 
This  was  her  Bible  in  the  earlier  days.  Later  in  life  she  laid  the 
somewhat  worn  volume  aside  for  a  new  one,  a  nonpareil  Oxford 
Bible  with  references,  1852,  with  inscription  in  her  husband's 
handwriting — 

MARGARET   RUSKIN 

DENMARK    HILL 

'  BOUGHT  AT  DOVER    I  3    MAY,    I  85  8 

— and  a  bearded  thistle-head  is  fastened  for  a  memento  on  the 
fly-leaf.  To  the  end  of  her  life  she  read  in  it  every  day,  and 
every  day  learned  two  verses  by  heart  ;  she  has  pencilled  on 
the  margins  the  dates  in  her  last  two  years,  1 870  and  1 87 1  ;  and 
after  the  daily  reading  she  always  put  the  volume  away  in  its 
yellow  silk  bag  with  purple  strings.  This  curious  habit  of 
dating  came  out  also  in  her  son's  old  age  ;  perhaps  the  modern 
psychologist  will  diagnose  in  it  some  form  of  degeneracy,  but 
in  old  times  dates  were  important  from  a  lingering  respect  for 
astrology,  which  is  betrayed — most  likely  unintended — in  the 
precision  with  which  John  Ruskin's  father  noted  the  exact  hour 
of  his  birth.  It  is  in  a  Baskett  Bible  of  1741,  with  engraved 
title-page,  and  a  pencil  drawing,  probably  by  John  in  his  boy- 
hood, stuck  in  as  a  sort  of  frontispiece — a  copy  from  a  picture 
of  Jesus  Mocked.  Opposite  to  it  is  written  :  "John  Ruskin, 
son  of  John  James  Ruskin  and  Margaret  Ruskin,  Born 
8  February  18 19  at  :|-  past  7  o'clock  Morning.  Babtized  (sic) 
20  Feby  18 19  by  the  Rev*^  Mr.  Boyd  " — the  father,  I  under- 
stand, of  "  A.K.H.B."  To  emphasise  the  Scottish  character  of 
the  family  one  may  note  that  this  volume  has  bound  up  with  it 
at  the  end  "  The  Psalms  of  David  in  Meeter,"  printed  at 
Edinburgh,  1738.  It  is  most  curious  that  Mr.  J.  J.  Ruskin.  a 
distinctly  well-educated  man,  should  have  made  the  mistake  in 


RUSKIN'S    BIBLES  197 

spelling,  and  carried  on  the  old  tradition  of  providing  material 
for  the  horoscope. 

Another  Baskett  Bible  of  1749,  nicely  rebound  in  old  red 
morocco,  handsomely  tooled,  bears  the  family's  earliest  register. 
It  is  writted  in  a  big,  unscholarly  hand  in  the  blank  space  of 
the  last  page  of  Maccabees  ;    for  this  volume  contained   an 


{MtMS  Hargreaves,  photographer) 

THE  BIBLE  FROM  WHICH  RUSKIN  LEARNT  IN  CHILDHOOD, 

AND  HIS  GREEK  MS.    PSALTER 

Apocrypha,  and  the  page  becoming  worn,  it  was  stuck  down  on 
the  cover.  *'John  Ruskin,  Baptized  Aprill  9th,  1732  O.S." 
(1.^.,  1733  new  style),  and  then  follow  the  children  of  this  John, 
with  dates  and  hours  of  birth,  between  1756  and  1772 — 
Margaret,  Mary,  William,  John  Thomas,  Elizabeth,  Robert, 
and  James.  John  Thomas,  born  October  22,  1761,  was  the 
father  of  John  James,  the  father  of  John.  Like  many  other 
remarkable  men  who  owed  their  fame  to  their  powers  rather 
than  to  their  circumstances,  Ruskin  came  of  a  line  of  decent, 


198  RUSKIN    RELICS 

respectable,  bourgeois  folk,  who  read  their  Bibles,  "  feared  God, 
and  took  their  own  part  when  required." 

His  earliest  literary  training,  so  to  say,  was  closely  connected 
with  Bible  study  :  for  every  Sunday  he  had  to  take  notes  of  the 
sermon  and  write  out  a  report  of  the  discourse.  One  of  his 
childish  sermon-books  is  preserved  in  the  Coniston  Museum, 
and  a  page  is  reproduced  here  to  show  the  care  of  writing  and 
choice  of  wording  insisted  upon.  In  the  stories  and  verses 
with  which  he  amused  himself,  he  learned  a  good  deal  of 
freedom  and  ease  :  in  these  he  learned  dignity  of  style,  a 
corrective  to  boyish  flippancy.  Also  he  got  the  habit  of  think- 
ing with  his  pen,  so  that  he  nearly  always  scribbled  when  most 
people  would  only  meditate.  His  father's  Bible  (a  small  pica 
8vo,  Oxford  edition  of  1846,  on  the  fly-leaf  *'  Margaret  Ruskin 
to  her  husband  John  James  Ruskin,  1850,"  finely  rebound  in 
tawny  leather,  gilt)  was  used  by  him  in  later  times,  and  side- 
lined vigorously  ;  all  the  blank  spaces  are  scribbled  over  with 
the  thoughts  that  came  as  he  read. 

There  is  a  grand  Old  Testament  in  Greek  MS.  The 
back  is  lettered  "  tenth  century,"  but  Dr.  Caspar  Rene 
Gregory,  who  spent  some  time  in  examining  the  books  at 
Brantwood,  pointed  out  that  the  Greek  date  for  1463  could 
be  dimly  seen  printed  off^  from  the  lost  final  leaf.  It  was 
bound  in  vellum  in  or  after  18 17,  to  judge  from  the  water- 
mark in  the  fly-leaves  ;  the  binding  alone  is  worm-eaten, 
leaving  the  body  of  the  book  untouched.  The  pages,  a  little 
waterstained,  are  written  large  and  quaint  with  the  reed  pen, 
and  adorned  with  strips  of  painted  pattern  and  Byzantine 
portraits  of  the  authors  of  the  books — Solomon  as  a  young 
king,  Isaiah  and  the  prophets  in  varying  phases  of  grey- bearded 
dignity  and  elaborate  robes  of  many  colours,  rather  coarsely 
but  very  richly  painted.  Such  a  book  to  most  would  be  quite 
too  sacred  for  anything  but  occasional  turning  with  care- 
ful finger-tips,  or  a  paper-knife  delicately  inserted  at  the 
outer   margin  of   the  leaves  ;    not  to  say  too  crabbed  in  its 


.i^cAln    ■2l*-u/  -^  >^**n. 


-^. 


TAr    A. 


;/  ....<vv^,A 


/..-,.  .....4.^  /-^A...f      ,'»^-W-    •■'•     ■•>      / 


1.^ 


^'y/' 


4.  ^^ 


'_»-       .'4-- 


i^tjr 


(i1/m  Brickhilt,  pholo^aplttr) 

A   PAGE   FROM  ONE  OF  THE  SERMON-BOOKS  WRITTEN   BY 

RUSKIN  AS  A  BOY 


RUSKIN'S    BIBLES 


201 


contractions  and  old  style  calligraphy  to  be  read  with  ease.     But 
Ruskin  read  it,  and  annotated  as  he  read.     He  did  the  same 


rtKii    Ht^,,    t,Y 


^C  TO -rft/uyL.  o f/ ^- o 


titrx-t  To*^ 


'TOTHCK.OuiiHc^aj.      * 
•^  K.XC.  TOTjr#pi-mi>s 


'r^i^.v-: 


0_T-f  O  t/ 1«4^  o  u  HJ«  Trtoo 
rf>CTO  W 1-^  «t  H«/TO  C 


16|- 


"^•"Ki^  - 


'-♦-KOI* 
•o  I  c  -t-  a-fxJM. 

"  OT-fo-lM 


'•■^Jf'^A 


{Miu  Brickhitl,  pkott^rapker) 
THE  GREEK  GOSPELS,   WITH  ANNOTATIONS  BY  RUSKIN 

with  the  Greek  Psalter  in  the  Coniston  Museum,  shown  in  the 
illustration  on  p.  197;  he  did  it  still  more  copiously,  and  in  ink, 
not  merely  in  erasible  pencil,  in  his  most  valuable  tenth-century 
Greek  Gospels,  or  rather  Book  of  Lessons,  from  which  we 


202  RUSKIN    RELICS 

have  a  page  photographed.  I  am  very  far  from  saying  that 
this  is  a  practice  to  be  imitated  ;  but  any  one  who  wishes  to 
follow  Ruskin  in  his  more  intimate  thoughts  on  the  Bible,  at 
the  time  of  crisis  in  1875  when  he  was  busy  on  this  book,  and 
when  he  was  beginning  to  turn  from  the  agnostic  attitude  of 
his  middle  life  to  the  old-fashioned  piety  of  his  age — any  one 
who  wants  to  get  at  his  mind  would  find  it  here. 

Some  of  the  remarks  merely  comment  on  the  grammatical 
forms,  or  the  contractions,  or  the  style  of  writing.  Where  a 
page  is  written  with  a  free  hand,  evidently  to  the  scribe's 
enjoyment,  he  notes  the  fact ;  and  likewise  where  the  scribe 
found  it  dull,  and  penned  perfunctorily.  That  is  quite  like 
him,  to  ask  how  the  man  felt  at  his  work  !  But  there  are 
many  curious  hints  of  questioning,  and  then  confessions  of  his 
doubts  about  the  doubts,  that  go  to  one's  heart  to  read.  "  I 
have  always  profound  sympathy  for  Thomas,"  he  scribbles. 
"  Well  questioned,  Jude  !  "  "  This  reads  like  a  piece  of  truth 
(John  xviii.  16).  How  little  one  thinks  of  John's  being  by,  in 
that  scene  !  "  "  The  hour  being  unknown,  as  well  as  unlocked 
for  (Matt.  xxiv.  42),  the  Lord  comes,  and  the  servant  does  not 
know  that  He  has — (and  has  his  portion,  unknowingly  ?)." 
To  the  cry  for  Barabbas  (Matt,  xxvii.  20)  he  adds,  "  Remem- 
ber !  it  was  not  the  mob's  fault,  except  for  acting  as  a  mob  "  ; 
and  to  verse  24  (Pilate  washing  his  hands) — "  How  any 
popular  electionist  or  yielding  governor  can  read  these  passages 
of  Matthew  and  not  shrivel  !  "  On  the  parable  of  the  vine, 
the  earlier  note  to  the  verse  about  the  withered  branch  cast 
into  the  fire  and  burned  is — "How  useless!  and  how  weak 
and  vain  the  whole  over-fatigued  metaphor  !  "  But  then — "  1 
do  not  remember  when  I  wrote  this  note,  but  the  '  over- 
fatigued  metaphor'  comes  to  me  to-day,  8th  Nov.  1877,  in 
connection  with  the  KaBwg  rjyd-n-r^ire,  as  the  most  precious  and 
direct  help  and  life."  You  remember  John  xv.  9  :  '*  As  the 
Father  hath  loved  me,  so  have  I  loved  you ;  continue  ye  in  my 
love."     That  word  was  the  help  and  life  he  found. 


(Mist  Briekhill,  phoi<^:rapher) 
KING   HAKONS  BIBLE 


O^  THE    '^ 

VN/VER8/Ty 


RUSKIN'S    BIBLES  205 

He  used  to  read  his  Latin  Bibles  too,  but  most  of  these 
were  collected  rather  for  their  artistic  value  than  otherwise. 
Of  printed  bibles  there  were  few  in  his  library  ;  one,  a  Latin 
version  in  three  volumes,  purple  morocco,  printed  by  Fran. 
Gryphius,  1541,  and  adorned,  as  the  title  puts  it,  with  images 
suitable  no  less  for  their  beauty  than  for  their  truth,  has  the 
cuts  resembling  Holbein's  work  in  "  Icones  Historiarum 
Veteris  Testamenti"  (Lyons,  apud  Joannem  Frellonium,  1547). 
But  he  loved  mediaeval  illumination,  and  owned  too  many 
thirteenth- and  fourteenth-century  Bibles,  Psalters,  and  Missals 
to  be  described  in  this  chapter. 

Mention  may  be  made  of  a  few,  such  as  the  big  fourteenth- 
century  Latin  Bible,  splendidly  written  in  double  columns  with 
stiff  Gothic  patterns  in  red  and  blue,  and  dainty  little  decorative 
initials,  each  a  picture.  Some  of  these  he  used  to  set  his  pupils 
and  assistants  to  enlarge ;  and  a  very  difficult  job  it  was  to  get 
the  curves  to  Ruskin's  mind.  If  you  made  them  too  circular 
he  would  expound  the  spring  of  the  lines  until  you  felt  that 
you  had  been  guilty  of  all  the  vices  of  the  vulgarest  architect's 
draughtsman,  an  awful  character  in  the  true  Ruskinian's  eyes. 
If  you  insisted  on  the  "infinite"  and  hyperbolic  sweep  of  the 
contour — and  you  can't  magnify  a  sixpence  into  a  dinner-plate 
without  some  parti  pris — then  you  had  the  lecture  on  Modera- 
tion and  Restraint.  But  Ruskin  was  always  very  good- 
humoured  and  patient  in  these  lessons  ;  in  the  end  a  happy 
mean  was  found  between  Licence  and  Formality,  and  such 
works  as  the  "  Noah's  Ark  " — now,  I  believe,  in  the  Sheffield 
museum — were  elaborated.  Perhaps  photography  would  have 
been  a  shorter  cut  ;  but  it  should  have  been  capital  training,  if 
one  had  known  what  use  to  make  of  it. 

Then  there  is  a  Versio  Vulgata  MS.  of  the  thirteenth 
•century,  poorly  half  bound  in  shabby  boards,  with  a  pencil 
note — not  by  Ruskin,  of  course — "bo'  at  Naples  1826  for 
21/-."  Twice  or  thrice  as  many  pounds  would  be  cheap  for  it 
310W,  I  suppose.     A  pleasant  story  is  told  by  Bishop   Nicolson 


2o6  RUSKIN    RELICS 

in  his  diary  of  the  year  when  Queen  Anne  came  to  the  throne, 
of  his  meeting  the  famous  Dr.  Bentley  on  the  Queen's  birthday 
(February  8,  1702),  and  how  the  great  Cambridge  scholar 
laughed  at  the  mania  for  possessing  rare  editions — a  fancy  by 
no  means  exclusively  of  these  latter  days.  "  He  ridicul'd  ye 
Expensive  humour  of  purchaseing  old  Editions  of  Books  at 
extravagant  Rates ;  a  Vanity  to  wch  ye  present  E.  of 
Sunderland  and  B(ishop)  of  N(orwich)  much  subject.  The 
former  bought  a  piece  of  Cicero's  works  out  of  Dr.  Fr. 
Bernard's  Auction,  printed  about  1480,  at  ye  Rate  of  31b.  2s.  6d. 
which  Dr.  Bentley  himself  had  presented  to  yt  physitian,  and 
wch  cost  him  no  more  than  the  odd  half  Crown."  The  Bishop 
of  Barrow-in-Furness  in  editing  the  diary  has  tried  to  trace  the 
subsequent  fortune  of  the  book  for  which  Bentley  thought 
£2  2s.  6d.  too  high  a  price.  There  seem  to  have  been  two 
volumes,  each  of  which  might  answer  to  the  description,  sold 
at  the  dispersal  of  the  Blenheim  library  in  1881  ;  and  of  these 
one  fetched  ;^54,  and  the  other  ^^38,  both  prices  greatly 
below  their  market  value  at  the  present  time. 

Very  like  the  last  mentioned  in  Ruskin's  collection  is  his 
small  thirteenth-century  Bible,  with  minute  double-columned 
writing,  as  tiny  as  newspaper  print,  but  perfectly  readable,  and 
lovely  to  look  at.  This  is  an  English-written  book,  with  a 
glossary  of  names  at  the  end  ;  it  came  from  the  library  of  the 
Hon.  Archibald  Eraser,  son  of  the  celebrated  Lord  Lovat. 
Another  small  thirteenth-century  Bible  is  Italian  work  ;  a 
German  MS.  Latin  prayer-book  and  psalter  dating  from  about 
1220,  with  rich  bold  pictures  and  ornament  in  broad  bands  of 
blue  and  burnished  masses  of  gold,  bound  in  grey-green  velvet, 
was  a  great  treasure.  His  so-called  St.  Louis  Psalter  and  the 
prayer-book  of  Yolande  of  Navarre  have  been  often  mentioned 
by  him,  but  to  go  into  these  would  take  us  away  from  our 
subject — his  Bibles. 

The  one  he  prized  most  is  known  as  King  Hakon's  Bible, 
from  a  reference  on  the  fly-leaf  to  King  Hakon  V.  of  Norway. 


n«nrt>*ttU  «»««  ui«Wm»'.'  »mj<t> 

urto  .\urM-  miptcvm  ftito-  awr ,. 
stinuMO  ciatcnmn  ft-  Mr  k^  Cm 

gttwnr.  Cr  twfflO  <vi!CpJ«mtf  4Mf 
««,» t  w- ccHitVXf  Autiuifru*  mcti 
KWcnt  aim*  rtt»>  vttenivcnr.  tViitl's  9t«il'i  ] 
<<ufncjtvur  cum  iufttfufinuftC' 

rt,«tfo«c  tsaiwnr  iVr  inxwaw  fttt 
« cOrt^ta^tcf  <»cuU(ft  &mttt»«r  , 

ivV  iicttrtitji  ytf^U'.Vnc  owctno  t- 1 
«ict<<»ttnti  wt)t4l:cacft»ccntA)rHii 

tficnctmamf  -tciioAnKiCcr \>\A  i 

CCW  ttt«JlflCt-HT.  iwrp:'ffcfAivp| 
a  yUv;  ft*  <'^*^''' •'^'"**^'**^'^" 

<^nUtR>n  fimr.  «>.u«'*ft»mptU 
tnuTucwtci'  Aitnimitrcrptt-ptt 
earm  <hrtnft  mJcwC  «nnnti  q-  ^ 

itmr.WTV.tt'«'<f*n»ti  vAiVncCv 

iv«<'«»l»"pt(I\»'"C«H  Trt<iltrC<tiMlOrJ 

»v>TOtnni»'.  ■*:  mfir  t  rctU^  wnr 

.  <^.  w<|tuHtf  iflntnittti  tx'nc  ^ 
ttMWfUsftCf  tcttctir.  ♦utMiucww 
'.<\two«>f  »v«if  lv«tBnm  AiVf^m*  I 


l»Hir«iw»  <ft-fio?tttn\  fr  {«fl 

RxiMC.Vr.ltMH'nui)).'  fuhuc 
IiVaOi  t.v^Ji»k*V;  vtvscn . .  ■ . .  .i 

ItiiUonmr  tvf  .i'-." 
|ttv«vctti- 

t^MirecniA".-..-. 

|u<*»<>  «'^"r  fi' f.ia  V  ■  ■ 

h-fdi^HV-liur.r.v:   ■-■• 
l<irUcn.'n>tui(iriii.Ytn  '.r; 
IttnitfA^llHurcf  ".uvu'.  .--.v- 
I  «»w^^^.^f  ncttem  •  fif  m  «T*  c 

fc^w^^PMcy  KHCWrftritLi'.V 

Ift- fijmtm  «»•  I  rA .  >»i»wtnO 

I  Mrf  tVA  •  ^wr  11  ,•  -^•  ( ^  i  •  ->■ 

iTtiuvim  Mwtm  i 

|«wir»S'  a** 

|tttAn4<  iJruu-irivii,  I.V cvr 
Iwiwini:!  Atr.  6«niuu.  nit 


•^IX*^ 


(Herr  K.  Kortn,  fkotograpktr) 
AN   ILLUMINATED   PAGE  OF   KING   HAKON'S   BIBLE 


or 


i^i^O 


RH\l^ 


RUSKIN'S    BIBLES  209 

It  is  a  small  volume  (shown  in  our  illustration  as  standing  in 
front  of  the  embroidered  cover  in  which  his  Birthday  Addresses 
are  kept)  with  613  leaves  of  the  thinnest  vellum,  measuring  no 
more  than  ^^  by  6^  inches,  and  written  in  tiny  black-letter, 
double  columned,  every  page  ornamented  ;  there  are  more  than 
eighty   delicately   painted   pictures,   and   hundreds   of  daintily 
coloured  initials,  a  perfect  treasury  of  decorative  art.     The 
binding  is  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  thought  to  be  English  ; 
boards  covered  with  brown  leather,  brass  bosses  and  clasps,  and 
stamped  with  panels  of  griffins  in  relief,  and  the  motto  repeated 
between  them  of  "  Jhesus  help."    The  book  is  French  work  of 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth    century,    and    the    black-letter 
inscription  reads,  "  Anno   dni.   M°.   CCC°.  X".   istum  librum 
emit  fr.   hanricus  prior  provlcialis  a  conventu  hathersleu.  de 
dono  dni.  regis  Norwegie,"  which  is  to  say:  "  In  13 10  brother 
Henry,  provincial  prior,  bought  this  book  from  the  Conventus 
(whatever  that  means)  at  Haderslev  (in  Sleswig)  out  of  the 
gift  of  my   lord  the  king  of   Norway."     It   hardly  seems  as 
though  the  king  had  owned  the  book,  as  Ruskin  believed  when 
he  bought  it,  but  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  keepers  of  the 
National  Library  at  Christiania  were  disappointed  in  finding  that 
it  had  gone  into  his  hands  from  Quaritch's  catalogue,  just  too 
soon  for  them  ;    and  that    the  Norwegians  sent  a  scholar  to 
report  upon  it,  Herr   Kristian  Koren,  and  on  Ruskin's  death 
again  tried  to  become  possessors,  though  Ruskin's  heirs  have, 
so  far,  not  seen  their  way  to  part  with  the  treasure  he  so  much 
valued.     To  Herr  Koren  I  owe  the  photograph  of  one  of  its 
pages,  here  reproduced. 

These  were  all  library  Bibles,  kept  in  his  study,  and  used 
there  ;  but  in  travelling  he  had  various  little  testaments  which 
he  carried  with  him,  such  as  the  set  shown  in  the  Ruskin 
Exhibition  at  Coniston  in  1900.  In  his  bedroom,  for  reading 
on  wakeful  nights,  he  had  the  "  Stereotype  Clarendon  Press 
Bible,  Printed  by  Samuel  Collingwood  and  Co."  in  six  volumes, 
one  being  the  Apocrypha,  and  this,  like  others,  bears  marks  of 

o 


2IO  RUSKIN    RELICS 

much  use  in  notes  and  pencillings.  He  had  more  respect  for 
the  Apocrypha  than  most  Protestant  Bible-readers.  At  one 
time  (1881)  he  presented  several  copies  of  this  Clarendon 
Press  edition,  bound  just  like  his  own,  to  a  few  friends  whom 
he  hoped  to  interest  in  "  St.  George's  work,"  with  the  inscrip- 
tion, "  From  the  Master."  To  the  same  he  gave  little  squares 
of  the  pure  gold,  beaten  thin,  out  of  which  he  meant  to  strike 
his  "St.  George's  coinage,"  saying,  "Now  you  have  taken  St. 
George's  money  ;  and  whether  you  call  yourself  one  or  no, 
you  are  a  member  of  my  Guild.  I  have  caught  you  with 
guile  !  " 

It  is  rather  curious,  and  characteristic  of  his  old-fashioned 
ways,  that  he  used  a  bookmarker  in  his  Bible — a  dark  blue 
ribbon,  an  inch  wide,  sewn  to  a  card,  on  which  was  the  text, 
'*  Day  by  day  we  magnify  Thee,"  written  and  painted  with  a 
fifteenth- century  style  of  ornament. 

Quite  at  the  end,  his  eyesight  failed  him  for  smaller  type, 
and  Mrs.  Severn  bought  him  a  larger-typed  Bible,  which  he 
read,  or  had  read  to  him,  constantly,  up  to  his  death.  The 
only  bit  of  his  writing  in  it  is  a  note  of  his  sadder  moods, 
"  The  burden  of  London,  Isaiah  xxiv."  ;  I  suppose  he  refers 
to  the  words,  "  Behold,  the  Lord  maketh  the  earth  empty 
.  .  .  From  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth  have  we  heard 
songs,  even  glory  to  the  righteous.  But  I  said,  My  leanness, 
my  leanness,  woe  unto  me  !  .  .  ."  Those  who  read  "  Fors  " 
know  how  little  he  trusted  our  imperialistic  optimism. 

Such  a  Bible-reader,  one  might  think,  would  have  collected 
something  in  the  way  of  a  theological  library,  what  are  called 
helps  to  Bible-reading.  But  no  !  he  read  neither  commentators 
nor  modern  critics,  and  I  believe  he  had  no  interest  in  anybody's 
views  about  exegesis  or  analysis.  He  kept  by  him  a  few 
volumes  of  reference  :  Smith's  "  Bible  Dictionary,"  Cruden, 
the  "  Englishman's  Greek  Concordance,"  Sharpe's  "  Trans- 
lation of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  "  (he  knew  no  Hebrew),  and 
there  were  two  copies  of  Finden's  "  Landscape  Illustrations  of 


RUSKIN'S    BIBLES  211 

the  Bible,"  one  for  his  study  and  one  for  his  bedroom.  But 
even  these'  few  were  little  used  ;  to  him  the  plain  old  text  was 
the  book  he  studied  all  through  his  eighty  years,  and  knew  as 
not  many  in  this  generation  know  it.  Once  in  his  rooms  at 
Oxford  I  remember  getting  into  a  difficulty  about  the  correct 
quotation  of  some  passage.  "  Haven't  you  a  concordance  ?  " 
I  asked.  "  I'm  ashamed  to  say  I  have,"  he  said.  I  did  not 
quite  understand  him.  "Well,"  he  explained,  "you  and  I 
oughtn't  to  need  Cruden  !  " 


XIV 

RUSKIN'S    "ISOLA 


XIV 

RUSKIN'S    "ISOLA" 


*I  GAVE  her  that  name,"  he  said  once,  "because  she  is  so 
unapproachable." 

When  he  was  a  very  young  man  he  saw  her  first  in  Rome. 
He  had  been  sent  there  for  the  winter  because  it  was  supposed 
he  was  going  into  a  consumption.  He  had  certainly  been 
working  very  hard  at  Oxford — not  only  doing  the  necessary 
reading  for  honours,  which  need  kill  nobody,  but  all  manner 
of  literature,  art,  antiquities  and  science  into  the  bargain,  as 
his  manner  was  ;  and  he  had  taken  terribly  to  heart  the  loss  of 
the  pretty  French  girl,  on  whom  his  boyish  affections  had  been 
set  for  years.  So  he  was  in  Rome  as  an  invalid,  restless  and 
discontented  ;  and  he  didn't  like  Raphael,  and  he  didn't  like 
the  other  things  people  ought  to  like.  It  must  have  been  a 
difficult  time  for  his  parents  ;  but  then  one  can't  expect  to 
bring  up  a  genius  without  a  certain  amount  of  trouble. 

In  a  while  he  took  a  turn,  and  condescended  to  go  with 
them  to  musical  services.  They  were  energetic  anti- Romanists  ; 
but  they  went  to  St.  Peter's  to  see  the  show,  and  to  hear 
the  singing.  They  thought  he  was  beginning  to  develop  an 
interest  in  music.     But  it  was  just  the  old  story. 

There  was  a  beautiful  Miss  ToUemache  in  Rome  that 
winter  ;  "  a  fair  English  girl,"  he  says,  '*  who  was  not  only 
the  admitted  Queen  of  beauty  in  the  English  circle  of  that 
winter  in  Rome,  but  was  so,  in  the  kind  of  beauty  which  I  had 


2i6  RUSKIN    RELICS 

only  hitherto  dreamed  of  as  possible,  but  never  yet  seen  living  ; 
statuesque  severity  with  womanly  sweetness  joined.  I  don't 
think  1  ever  succeeded  in  getting  nearer  than  within  fifty  yards 
of  her  ;  but  she  was  the  light  and  solace  of  all  the  Roman 
winter  to  me,  in  the  mere  chance  glimpses  of  her  far  away,  and 
the  hope  of  them." 

It  was  very  like  Ruskin,  and  it  says  very  much  for  the 
reality  of  the  romantic  ideal  he  preached,  that  a  few  gHmpses 
of  a  far-away  beauty,  whom  he  had  neither  the  chance  nor  the 
intention  of  approaching,  should  have  made  a  man  of  him,  out 
of  a  pining,  love-sick  boy.  Open-air  sketching  helped  him 
out  of  his  consumption,  or  whatever  the  disease  was  ;  but  the 
rporal  stimulus  and  reawakening  of  healthy  imagination  and 
power  to  work  were  given  him  by  this  pure  enthusiasm  for  a 
beautiful  face,  fifty  yards  away. 

He  never  saw  her  again  for  about  ten  years,  not  until  she 
was  a  wedded  wife.  She  had  married  a  younger  son  of  Earl 
Cowper  and  his  wife,  daughter  of  Lord  and  Lady  Melbourne, 
and  by  second,  marriage  wife  of  Lord  Palmerston.  The  Hon. 
William  Cowper  was  one  of  the  most  shining  examples  of  the 
type — one  does  not  see  much  about  it  in  newspapers  or  histories, 
but  private  memoirs  describe  it  in  all  ages,  and  no  doubt  it 
exists  even  in  this — the  type  of  good  men  in  great  positions, 
men  who  are  in  the  world  and  very  actively  engaged  in  it,  but 
quite  unspotted.  He  began  life  as  aide-de-camp  to  the  Lord- 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland  in  1830,  and  went  into  Parliament  in 
1835  »  ^^  ^^^  ^  Lord  of  the  Treasury  in  1845,  ^^^^  ^  Lord 
of  the  Admiralty,  then  President  of  the  Board  of  Health, 
Vice-President  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  Paymaster-General, 
Chief  Commissioner  of  Works,  Vice-President  of  the  Educa- 
tion Department  of  the  Privy  Council,  Chairman  of  Mr. 
Fawcett's  Committee  on  the  Enclosure  Acts  ;  it  was  he  who 
saved  Epping  Forest  in  1871,  and  was  prime  mover  in  the 
preservation  of  open  spaces  and  in  granting  allotments  to 
the  poor;    he  passed  the  Medical    Bill  in    1858,  the  Thames 


LADY   MOUNT   TEMPLE,    WHEN   MRS.    COWl'ER-TEMFLE.     UNDER  THE 

BEECH-TREES  AT  A   BROADLANDS  CONFERENCE 

From  a  painting  by  Edward  Clifford  about  1876 


RUSKIN'S    "ISOLA"  219 

Embankment  Bill  in  1862-3,  and  the  Courts  of  Justice  Building 
Bill  in  1863;  the  "  Cowper-Temple  Clause,"  to  secure  the 
reading  of  the  Bible  in  Board  Schools,  was  his  ;  he  was  the 
great  reconstructor  of  the  London  Parks  and  inventor  of  the 
scheme  for  distributing  the  Park  flowers  to  hospitals,  work- 
houses and  schools.  It  would  be  long  to  tell  how  he  made 
politics  philanthropic  and  brought  art  into  the  public  service. 
After  45  years  in  Parliament  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as 
Lord  Mount  Temple,  and  died  in  1888. 

All  these  things  are  known,  or  knowable,  to  the  public  ;  but 
what  is  more  to  the  point.  Histories  of  Our  Own  Times  don't 
tell  us  :  how  the  lively  Eton  boy,  always  in  scrapes,  occasionally 
flogged,  had  according  to  Gladstone's  reminiscence  "  the  stamp 
of  purity,  modesty,  gentleness  upon  him  in  a  peculiar  degree  ": 
how  the  dandy  officer  in  the  Blues  wanted  to  go  into  the 
Church  '*as  a  means  of  escaping,"  he  wrote,  "the  imminent 
dominion  of  the  sins  which  it  seemed  so  difficult  to  avoid  "  : 
how  the  busy  M.P.  and  official,  Palmerston's  step-son  and 
favourite,  kept  through  all  distractions  a  perfectly  holy  and 
saintly  life,  a  sense  of  nearness  to  God  and  devotion  to  His 
will,  that  should  put  much  professional  piety  to  shame. 

For  instance,  in  his  diary  he  noted  Queen  Victoria's 
coronation,  which,  of  course,  he  had  attended — he  had  dined 
with  the  Queen  a  couple  of  days  before — and  continued,  "The 
main  object  to  be  pursued  in  life  is  communion  with  God.  It 
is  a  good  method  of  testing  any  way  of  spending  my  time  to 
ask,  does  it  render  me  more  ready  for  communion  with  God.''" 
At  twenty-seven  he  had  long  known  all  that  evangelical  piety 
at  its  best  can  teach  ;  and  he  always  kept  the  faith.  Ten  years 
later,  his  young  wife — the  Miss  Tollemache  of  Ruskin's 
admiration,  and  the  Lady  Mount  Temple  laid  in  1901  to  rest  by 
her  husband's  side — asked  him,  at  a  large  party  at  the  Palmer- 
ston's, what  interested  him  most.  "  Oh,  nothing,"  he 
answered,  "  compares  in  interest  with  communion  with  my 
Master,   and  work  for   Him."     "  This,"   she   added,    in  her 


220  RUSKIN    RELICS 

privately  printed  volume  of  Memorials^  ''  this  was  the  spirit  ot 
his  life,  through  all  the  blessed  years  I  lived  with  him." 

So  after  a  long  interval  during  which  Ruskin  had  become 
a  famous  writer,  and  the  girl  at  Rome  had  become  the  true 
helpmate  of  such  a  man,  they  met  once  more.  It  is  rather 
curious  to  compare  their  two  separate  accounts  of  the  meeting. 
The  lady  says,  referring  to  the  earlier  part  of  her  married  life, 
in  the  'fifties  and  'sixties,  "  Another  great  delight  to  us  at  this 
time  was  going  up  occasionally  to  Denmark  Hill  for  a  happy 
day  with  Mr.  Ruskin.  It  seems  that,  quite  unknown  to 
myself,  he  had  noticed  me  when  we  were  in  Rome  together  in 
1840  !  I  was  then  eighteen.  It  was  rather  humiliating  that 
when  we  met  again,  after  about  ten  years,  he  did  not  recognise 
me.  We  became  great  friends  :  I  was  fond  of  his  cousin 
Joan  " — Mrs.  Arthur  Severn.  Ruskin's  way  of  putting  it 
was  rather  different,  and  the  mere  man  doesn't  quite  see  where 
the  humiliation  comes  in.  He  hated  going  to  parties,  he  says ; 
but  one  evening  was  introduced  to  a  lady  who  was  "  too  pretty 
to  be  looked  at  and  yet  keep  one's  wits  about  one  " — that  is 
very  characteristic  of  him  :  so  he  talked  a  little  with  his  eyes 
on  the  ground.  "  Presently,  in  some  reference  to  Raphael  or 
Michael  Angelo,  or  the  musical  glasses,  the  word  '  Rome ' 
occurred  ;  and  a  minute  afterwards,  something  about  Christ- 
mas in  1 840.  I  looked  up  with  a  start  ;  and  saw  that  the 
face  was  oval— fair — the  hair,  light  brown.  After  a  pause  I 
was  rude  enough  to  repeat  her  words,  '  Christmas  in  1840  !  — 
were  you  in  Rome  then  .'' '  '  Yes,'  she  said,  a  little  surprised, 
and  now  meeting  my  eyes  with  hers,  inquiringly.  Another 
tenth  of  a  minute  passed  before  I  spoke  again.  '  Why,  I  lost 
all  that  winter  in  Rome  in  hunting  you  !  '  It  was  Egeria 
herself !  then  Mrs.  Cowper-Temple.  She  was  not  angry ;  and 
became  from  that  time  forward  a  tutelary  power,  of  the  brightest 
and  happiest.  Egeria  always  had  her  own  way  everywhere, 
thought  that  I  also  should  have  mine,  and  generally  got  it  for 
me. 


(F,  Hollytr,  pkotogtupktr,  g  Ptmbroke  Square,  W.) 

LADY  MOUNT  TEMPLE 

From  a  Chalk  Drawing  by  G.  F.  Watts,  R.A.,  1894 


RUSKIN'S    "ISOLA"  223 

By  the  kindness  of  Mrs.  Arthur  Severn  I  have  by  me  the 
long  series  of  Ruskin's  letters  to  Lord  and  Lady  Mount 
Temple.  To  any  one  who  knew  the  people  and  circumstances 
touched  upon,  they  would  be  most  interesting  ;  delightfully 
amusing  for  the  most  part,  but  sometimes  intensely  painful, 
where  the  fiery  genius  poured  out  his  woes  and  disappointments, 
public  and  private,  into  their  kindly  ears.  She  was  his  confi. 
dant  in  all  that  unhappy  love-story  which  ended  so  tragically 
for  his  later  life  :  she  was  his  sympathetic  adviser  in  much  of 


LADY   MOUNT  TEMPLE 
From  a  photograph  taken  in  1886  by  Rose  Durrant  and  Son,  Torquay 

his  work.  Mr.  Cowper-Temple,  too,  was  a  kindly  and  helpful 
friend.  In  the  early  days  he  introduced  Ruskin  to  Palmerston, 
and  smoothed  the  way  for  various  plans  connected  with  the 
National  Gallery  and  public  art-works,  many  of  which  owed 
their  promotion  to  Ruskin  in  the  first  instance.  I  cannot  trace 
his  direct  influence  in  the  philanthropic  labours  of  Mr. 
Cowper-Temple  and  the  politicians  of  his  circle  ;  but  Ruskin 
was  personally  admired  and  loved  by  many  of  them,  and 
certainly  had  an  indirect  share  in  much  that  was  done  for  the 
help  of  the  people.  When  he  attempted  to  found  his  Guild  of 
St.  George,  Mr.  Cowper-Temple  was  one  of  the  Trustees;  not 


224 


RUSKIN    RELICS 


with  great  faith  in  the  scheme,  but  with  much  affection  for  the 
schemer. 

After  some  years  of  "Mr,  and  Mrs.  Cowper  "  the  acquaint- 


LADY   MOUNT  TEMPLE 
From  a  photograph  taken  in  1889  by  Rose  Durrant  and  Son,  Torquay 

ance  warmed  into  a  closer  friendship.  They  became  Ruskin's 
"  <pi\og  "  and  "  <plXn,"  for  he  always  nicknamed  his  intimates, 
and  often  so  whimsically  that  his  letters  are  quite  ludicrously 
unprintable.  To  them  he  was  "  St.  C." — Saint  Chrysostom, 
the    "  golden-mouthed  "  ;  and  sometimes,  he  liked  to  think, 


RUSKIN'S    "ISOLA"  225 

St.  Christopher,  When  he  was  very  ill  at  Matlock  in  1871 
Mrs.  Cowper-Temple  came  to  nurse  him,  and  from  that  time 
he  was  her  *'  Loving  little  boy,"  and  his  friends  were  his 
"  Dearest  Mama  "  and  '*  Dear  Papa."  His  view  of  life  was 
that  he  grew  younger  as  the  years  went  on — and  so  from 
being  '*  Dearest  Mama  "  she  became  "  Darling  Grannie,"  and 
he  signed  "  Ever  your  poor,  grateful  little  boy."  It  is  perhaps 
all  very  absurd  ;  but  one  certainly  does  not  understand  Ruskin 
without  knowing  this  queer  side  of  his  character,  part  senti- 
mental, part  grotesque,  which  creeps  out  even  in  his  most 
serious  writing,  and  makes  it  so  impossible  to  take  his  every 
word  for  gospel  message.  But  very  often  he  wrote  to  her  and 
of  her  as  Isola — the  island — "  Isola  Bella  "  standing  alone  and 
unapproachable  by  all  ordinary  roads,  and  yet  open  on  all  sides 
to  the  waifs  of  the  waves,  claiming  haven  and  rest  in  her 
sympathy.  Here  is  the  whole  of  a  little  note  written  in  a  dark 
time  in  his  later  years  :  "  Is  there  no  Isola  indeed,  where  we 
can  find  refuge — and  give  it .''  I  have  never  yet  been  so  hope- 
less of  doing  anything  more  in  this  wide-wasting  and  wasted 
earth,  unless — we  seize  and  fortify  with  love — a  new  Atlantis. 
Ever  your  devoted  St.  C." 

There  are  very  few  bits  in  the  letters  of  general  interest. 
Of  somebody's  sketches  sent  for  him  to  look  at  he  wrote  : 
*'  Alas,  there's  no  genius  in  these  drawings.  Genius  never 
exists  without  intense  industry.  Industry  is  not  genius,  but  is 
the  vital  element  of  it."  In  Bible  reading — "  I  noticed, 
curiously  for  the  first  time,  two  mqgt  important  mistranslations. 
Fancy  never  having  noticed  before  that  *  Sufficient  unto  the 
day  is  its  evil,'  ought  to  be  '  Let  the  day's  evil  suffice  for  it.' 
And  *chasteneth'  ought  in  several  cases  to  be  merely  'bringeth 
up,  teacheth  ! '  "  Here  is  what  he  urged  upon  hrs  friends  in 
all  seriousness,  and  most  strangely  if  you  think  who  the  friends 
were  :  *'  You  are  compromising  somehow  between  God  and 
Satan,  and  therefore  don't  see  your  way.  Satan  appears  to  you 
as  an  angel  of  the  most  exquisite  light — I  can  see  that  well 

p 


226  RUSKIN    RELICS 

enough  ;  but  how  many  real  angels  he  has  got  himself  mixed 
up  with  I  don't  know.  However,  for  the  three  and  fortieth 
time — in  Ireland  or  England  or  France,  or  under  the  Ara  cceli 
perhaps  best  of  all,  take  an  acre  of  ground,  make  it  lovely, 
give  what  food  comes  of  it  to  people  who  need  it — and  take 
no  rent  of  it  yourselves.  *But  that  strikes  at  the  very  founda- 
tions of  Society  } '  It  does  ;  and  therefore,  do  it.  For  the 
Foundations  of  Society  are  rotten  with  every  imaginable  plague, 
and  must  be  struck  at  and  swept  away,  and  others  built  in 
Christ,  instead  of  on  the  back  of  the  Leviathan  of  the  Northern 
Foam.  Ever  your  affectionate  St.  C.  —  not  the  Professor," 
It  was  to  Lady  Mount  Temple  he  wrote  the  pretty  letter 
telling  her  to  arrange  her  party  just  as  if  Christ  were  coming- 
to  dinner — it  is  printed  in  "  Fors  Clavigera  " — "  I  suppose  Him 
to  have  just  sent  Gabriel  to  tell  you  He's  coming,  but  that 
you're  not  to  make  any  alterations  in  your  company  on  His 
account." 

Perhaps  she  hardly  needed  a  Ruskin  to  tell  her  that  :  but 
she  kept  the  letter,  and  did  what  it  bade.  Those  who  know 
anything  about  the  Broadlands  Conferences,  those  remarkable 
meetings  of  men  and  women  in  all  ranks  and  of  every  shade  of 
religious  belief,  come  together  "  for  the  deepening  of  spiritual 
life,"  know  what  singular  influence  was  wielded  by  Lady  Mount 
Temple,  and  how  far-reaching  that  influence  has  become. 

Ruskin  used  sometimes  to  visit  at  Broadlands.  One  winter 
he  spent  several  weeks  there,  and  Lady  Mount  Temple  says  in 
the  volume  already  quoted*:  "  We  found  him,  as  always,  most 
delightful  and  instructive  company  ;  his  talk  full  and  brilliant, 
and  his  kindness  increasing  to  all  the  house,  giving  a  halo  to 
life.  He  set  us  all  to  manual  work  !  He  himself  undertook 
to  clean  out  the  fountain  in  the  garden,  and.  made  us  all, 
from  Juliet  (Madame  Deschamps,  Lady  Mount  Temple's 
adopted  daughter)  to  Mr.  Russell  Gurney,  pick  up  the 
fallen  wood  and  make  it  up  into  bundles  of  faggots  for  the 
poor  ! 


RUSKIN'S    "ISOLA"  227 

His  friends  also  came  to  see  him  at  Brantwood.  Mrs. 
Arthur  Severn  has  a  lively  story  of  an  excursion  with  them  to 
the  Monk  Coniston  Tarn,  a  pretty  bit  of  water  on  the  hills, 
with  a  fine  panorama  of  mountains  all  round,  the  show-place  of 
Coniston.  It  was  a  foggy  morning,  but  he  hoped  it  would 
clear  ;  and  they  drove  up  through  the  woods  in  expectation, 
but  it  was  still  foggy.  They  got  out  of  the  carriage  and 
walked  to  the  finest  point  of  view  ;  still  the  fog  would  not  lift. 
Then  Ruskin  waved  his  hand  and  pointed  to  the  scene  they 
ought  to  see  ;  and  in  his  best  eloquence,  and  with  growing 
warmth  described  the  lakelet  embosomed  in  its  woods  and 
moors,  Helvellyn  and  the  Pikes,  Bow  Fell  and  Wetherlam,  and 
the  Coniston  Old  Man.  For  a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  the 
whole  was  before  their  eyes  ;  and  then  they  burst  out  laughing. 
"  After  all,"  said  Lady  Mount  Temple,  "  is  not  this  the  best 
treat  we  could  have  .''  "  "  And  to  me,"  said  Ruskin,  with  his 
old-fashioned  courtliness,  "  what  view  could  be  so  entirely 
delightful  ?  " 


INDEX 


Agates,  Ruskin's  theory  of,  173 

Aix-les-Bains,  78 

Alessandri,  A.,   103 

Alexander,    Mrs.    and    Miss    Fran- 

cesca,   102,   103,   146 
Animals,  Ruskin's  love  of,  74 
Annecy,  74-78 
Apocrypha,  210 
Arnold,  Sir  Edwin,  32 
Art-study  under  Ruskin,  4,  7,  iii, 

205 
Atkinson,  Mr.,  136 
Autographs  of  Ruskin,  135,  145 

owned  by  him,  183,  189,  190 
Avallon,  48-51 

Barrow-in-Furness,     Bishop    of, 

206 
Barrow,  Mont.,  24 
Bateman,  the  Misses,  156 
Baxter,  Mr.,  65,  93,  97 
Bell,  William,  J.P.,  23,  24 
Beever,  John,  23 

Miss  Susanna,  70 
"Bible  of  Amiens,"  49,  51,  131 
Bible-reading    of    Ruskin,    69,    70, 

195,  202,  210,  225 
"  Bibliotheca  Pastorum,"  8 
Bibliomania    under    Queen    Anne, 

206 
Boating  experiences  of  Ruskin,  16, 

18,  26 
Boni,  Signor  G.,   103 
Boyd,  Rev.  Mr.,  196 
Brabazon,  Mr.,  131 


':  Brantwood  gardens,  31,  32,  36,43,44 
I  harbour,  9,  17 

I  library,  182-190,   196-210 

moor,   10,  40 
woods,  32-39 
Brayshay,  Mr.  W,  Hutton,  16 
Bronzino's  Judith,  102 
Bunney,  J.  W.,  50,  loi,  129 
Burne- Jones,  Sir  Edward,  156 

Calais,  47 

Casts  from  natural  leaves,  136 

sculpture,  98 
Chair,  Ruskin's,  3,  4 
ChAlons,  48 
Champagnole,  52 
Chesneau,  Ernest,  162 
Christy  Minstrels,  156 
Churchill,  Mrs.  W.  H.,  17 

Rev.  W.  H.,  17s 
CJteaux,  51 
Claribel,   156 
Cluses,  66 

Col  de  la  Faucille,  59 
Colouring    of    Ruskin's    drawings, 

108,  122,  125,  126 
Coniston  Hall,  21,  23,  24 
Coniston  Ruskin  Exhibitions,   131, 

132 
Museum,  3,    10,  25,    131,    136, 

174,  195,  198,  20I 
Cook,  Mr.  E.  T.,  130 
Cooke,  Mr.  E.,   136 
Cowper-Temple,     Mr.     and     Mrs., 

216-225 


230 


INDEX 


Creswick,  Prof,  B.,   159 
Crystallography,  -j-j,   176 
Cunliffe,  Mrs.,  130 

Dalby,  Charles,  26 
Deschamps,  Madame,  226 
"  Deucalion,"    177 
Diamonds,   174-176 
Digging,  9 
Dijon,  51 
Dog  stories,  74 
Dole,  Mt.,  59 

Drawings   by   Ruskin,   47,   49,    50, 
82,  93,   102,   121-132 

Engineering,    Ruskin's    turn    for, 

43 
Exhibitions  of  Ruskin's  drawings, 
130-132 

Fielding,  Copley,   122,   124 
Fiesole  and  Florence,   102 
Froude,  J.  A.,  26 

Gale,  Miss,  24 

Galena,  story  of  Ruskin's,  173 

Gardens,  31,  32,  43,  44 

Geneva,  60,  81 

Geological    Magazine,    Ruskin's 

papers,   173 
Geology,   Ruskin's  interest  in,    10, 

50,  60,  66,  97,  III,  116 
Globe  of  the  stars,  10 
Gold  as  it  grows,   168 
Gorge  of  the  Ain,  52 

Fier,  "jy 
Granite  of  central  France,  50,  51 
Gregory,  Dr.  C.  R.,   198 
Guinigi  of  Lucca,  90,  93 
Gules  and  gul,  176 

Hakon's  Bible,  206-209 
Halle,  Charles,  155  > 

Hand  of  Ruskin,  136 
Handwriting,    development    of 

Ruskin's,   138-145  ' 

"  Harbours  of  England,"   16  j 


Harding,  J.  D.,   127,   190 
Herdson,  Dawson,  116 
Hilliard,    Laurence  J.,   15,   22,   26, 
loi,  177 

Miss  C,   17 

Miss,   130 
Hinksey,  9 

History  in  graphic  statistics,  118 
"  Hortus  Inclusus,"  23,  70,   131 
HuUah,  John,   156 
Hunt,  Alfred  W.,  7 

Ilaria  del  Carretto,  89-93,  9^ 
"  Iris  of  the  Earth,"   175 
Isola,  215,  225 

Journals  of  Ruskin,  65,   123 

quoted,  50,  69,  70,  jz,   74,  78, 
82,  85,  86,   loi,  102 
Jumping  Jenny,   15,  23-26 
Jura  Mts.,  52-59 

Juvenile    works    of    Ruskin,     138, 
141 

Keswick,  intended  jewel-museum 

170 
Kirkcudbright,     Ruskin's     gift     of 

minerals,   175 
Koren,  Herr  Kristian,  209 

Lake-district  boats,  21 
Laon,  47,  48 

Lebrun,  Madame  Vigee,  62 
Les  Rousses,  52,  55 
Liberty,  Ruskin  on,  52 
Limestone  country,  51,  52 
"Love's  Meinie,"   10,   118 
Lucca,  86-101 

Macdonald,  Miss,   162 
Manuscripts  of  Ruskin,   135 

owned  by  him,  189,  198-209 
Map-drawings  by  Ruskin,   1 08-1 18 
Maps  used  by  him,   115,   116 
Maundrell,  Mr.,  49 
Mephistopheles  coachman  and  dog 
Tom,  72,  74 


INDEX 


23 


Minerals,   Ruskin's   interest  in,   85, 

167-178 
Model  of  Brantwood  moor,   10 

Coniston  fells,   116 

feathers,   10 

Jumping  Jenny,  23,  25 

South-coast  boats,  26 
"Modem    Painters,"    26,   66,    124, 
126,  128,  129,  135,  144,  145 
Monk-Coniston  tarns,  227 
Monnetier,  60 
Mont  Blanc,  59,  69,  70 
Montreal,  50 
Moorland  garden,  40-44 
Momex,  60,  61 
Morris,  William,   118,  189 
Mount    Temple,    Lord    and    Lady, 

216-227 
"  Munera  Pulveris,"  60 
Murray,  Mr.  C.  F.,  103 
Music,     compositions     of     Ruskin, 
159-164 

lessons,  151-155 

preferences    of    Ruskin,     155, 
156,  159 

Nant  d'Arpenaz,  69,  70,  73 
Natural  history,  Ruskin's  interest, 

10     {And  see  Geology,  &c.) 
Newman,  Mr.  H.  R.,  98,  102,  103 
Nicknames     of     Ruskin     and     his 

friends,  224,  225 
I^orton,  Prof.  C.  E.,  69,   121,   128 
"  Notes  on  the  Turner  Exhibition," 

108 

Oil-painting,    Ruskin's   attempts, 

122 
Omar-Khayyam,  Ruskin  on,   190 
"  Our  Fathers  Have  Told  Us,"  51, 

118 
Oxford  Drawing-school,  4,  7 

Palmerston,  Lord,  216,  223 
Paris,  81 

Pedigree  of   Ruskin,   contributions 
to,  16,   196,   197 


Pisa,  77,  86,  97,   103,  104 

Plague-wind,  56,  73,  74 

"Poems    of    John    Ruskin,"     123, 

124,   127 
"Poetry     of     Architecture,"     124, 

129,  144 
"  Praeterita,"  51,  55,  59,  70,  82 
Print-style  writing,   137,   138 
Prout,  Samuel,   123,   190 

QuERCiA,  Jacopo  della,  90 

Railways,  Ruskin  on,  66,  78 

Randal,  Mr.  F.,  49,  103 

Reading  aloud,  15 

"  Redgauntlet,"   15,   159 

Reims,  48 

Religion    of    Ruskin,    51,   69,    195, 

202,  210,  226 
Reservoirs  at  Brantwood,  43 
Restoration  of  churches,  50 
Rhone  at  Geneva,  60 
Richmond,  George,  3 
"  Roadside  Songs  of  Tuscany,"  102 
Roberts,  David,   125 

Mr.,   155 
Jlobson,  Mr.  E.  R.,  103 
Rooke,  Mr.  T.  M.,  103 
Rowing,  Ruskin  on,   18 
Royal  Academy,  Ruskin  exhibit,  131 

Ruskin  expelled,  132 
Runciman,  Mr.,   122 
"  Ruskin   et  la   Bible  "   {by   H.    J. 

Brunhes),   195 
Ruskin,  J.  J.,   122,   141,   142,   183, 
196-198 

Mrs.  (John  Ruskin's  mother), 
142,  144,  155,  187,  196,  198 

Sailor  ancestors  of  Ruskin,  16 

St.  Benedict,  66,  73,  81 

St.  Bernard  of  Menthon,  81 

St.  Bernard's  birthplace,  51 

St.  Cergues,  55-59 

St.  George's  Guild  and  work,  8,  49, 

66,   7i,   102,    103,  210,   223. 

{And    see    Sheffield    Ruskin 

Museum) 


232 


INDEX 


St.  Martin,  Sallenches,  70 

Saleve,  60 

Sallenches,  66-73 

Sea-studies  of  Ruskin,   16,  26 

Sens,  48 

Sermons  reported  by  Ruskin,  198 

"Sesame  and  Lilies,"  49 

"Seven    Lamps    of    Architecture," 

51,   127,   129 
Severn,  Mr.  Arthur,   17,   131 

Mrs.    Arthur,    17,    32,    49,    66, 

146,  155,  156,  176,  210,   220, 

223,  227 
Sheffield  Ruskin  Museum,  98,   loi, 

103,   175,  205 
Shorthand  notes  by  Ruskin,   143 
Smoke-plague,  56,  74,  yj 
Snail  (sailboat),  26,  27 
"Stones  of  Venice,"  124,  127,  128, 

"  Storm-cloud    of    the    Nineteenth 

Century,"   55,  69 
"Studies  in  Both  Arts,"   124 
Swiss  statuette,   187 
Swiss  towns,  intended  history,  128 

Taglioni  and  Ruskin,   142 
Talloires,  77-81 
To-day,  Ruskin's  motto,  "jy 
ToUemache,  Miss,  215 


Translation,  Ruskin's  method,  8 

Troyes,  48 

Turin,  85 

Turner  and  the  sea,   16 

Coteau  scenery,  48 

Pass  of  Faido,   127 

Riviera  subject,  85 

Sun  of  Venice,   132 

Ugolino's  mountain,  97 

Vandyck's  enjoyment  in  painting, 

85 
"Verona  and  other  Lectures,"  51, 

124 
Verses  by  Ruskin,  24,   164 
Vezelay,  50 
Viking  ship,  26 
VioUet-le-Duc,  50,   183 

Wakefield,  Miss,   151,  156 
Ward,  Mr.  W.,   129 
Wedderburn,  Mr.  A.,  K.C.,  8 
West,  Mr.  G.  F.,  152 
Whitelands  College,   175 
Wine,  Ruskin  on,  61 
Writing  from  maps  and  sketches, 
112,  115,  132 

Xenophon's  "  Economist,"  8 


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